The Impact Of Structure On Physical Activity Of Preschool-aged Children

BACKGROUND: Higher levels of physical activity (PA), are associated with positive health outcomes among children. Structured environments, such as daycare, may be a potential mechanism for promoting healthy behaviors and limiting discretionary time when children may engage in unhealthy behaviors; however, the literature examining the relationship between daycare and children engaging in PA has been mixed and limited in examination at the day-level. Understanding the potential role structure may have as a mechanism to improve movement behaviors of preschool-aged children may guide the development of effective intervention strategies. The current study used intensive longitudinal data to examine the within- and between-person effects of hours spent in daycare (i.e., structure) on children’s physical activity. METHODS: Children (N = 67, 4.5 ± 0.8 yrs, 49.3% female, 65.7% White) wore an Axivity AX3 accelerometer on their wrist 24 hours/day for 14 days. Data were processed with GGIR (v2.6-4) with the Roscoe et al. (2017) intensity thresholds for preschoolers. Caregivers reported the number of hours their child attended daycare each day. We ran linear mixed-effects models predicting day-level moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and light physical activity (LPA) from hours spent in daycare. We included child age, sex, income and non-wear-time as covariates. Weekends were excluded from analysis. RESULTS: Children wore accelerometers for an average of 9.3 ± 1.2 (range = 1-11) days and 59 children attended daycare on at least one day. Children spent an average of 3.7 ± 2.2 hrs/day in daycare and had an average of 116.5 ± 22.2 min of MVPA/day and an average of 115.4 ± 26.1 min of LPA/day. Mixed models indicated that for every 1-hour extra children spent in daycare above their own average daycare/preschool time, children had 1.1 min (95%CI = 0.2, 1.9) more MVPA/day and 1.4 min (95%CI = 0.6, 2.1) more LPA/day. CONCLUSION: On days when children attend more hours of daycare, beyond their typical daycare time, they have more minutes of MVPA and LPA. Daycare, as a source of structure, may be a day-level contextual factor to help improve movement behaviors in children. Future studies should examine the impact of structure from daycare on other movement behaviors such as sleep and sedentary behavior.