Background Perceptions of neighborhood safety are important environmental factors associated with physical activity. Safety is a multi-layered concept that is perceived differently by different groups of people (e.g., adults vs. children, male vs. female, white vs. non-white Hispanic) and for different judgmental criteria (e.g., safety from crime, traffic ...
Background Although physical activity fosters healthy development among children (such as reducing obesity and type 2 diabetes risk as well as promoting positive mental well-being), less than half of children meet national physical activity guidelines. The accumulating research indicates that neighborhood environmental characteristics (e.g. access to walking destinations and community ...
Background Increasingly the combination of GPS, GIS and accelerometry is being employed in research on physical activity and the environment. GPS has potential as an objective and accurate method of collecting data on journeys and places used that does not suffer some of the drawbacks of alternative methods. Several studies ...
Background Toward stemming the rise in childhood obesity, researchers are increasingly targeting increased physical activity (PA) in very young children (i.e., 3-5 y). Interventions aimed at this age group are few but growing in number and have typically focused on evaluating changes in equipment, staff development, programs, and policies. ...
Background Large changes in physical activity (PA) can be observed among teenagers. The majority of 11 year olds in Denmark do meet the recommend level of PA; the majority of 15 year olds do not. The chances of not meeting the recommended level of PA as adults are strongly correlated with not ...
Background The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation suggests that what happens inside the classroom to help prepare children for success is of equal importance to what happens outside on the playground. Children between 1st and 6th grade, on average, spend more time per week in recess than PE or after school ...
Background Parks are an important attribute of the built environment and are known to be associated with psychological, social and physical health benefits, perhaps as a result of improved opportunities to engage in physical activity (PA). Parks may be more likely to influence PA if they are accessible and if ...
Background Positive associations between dog ownership and adult health outcomes have been observed, but research involving youth is lacking. Purpose The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship of family dog ownership to adolescent physical activity. Methods Data were collected on dog ownership in 618 adolescent/parent pairs between 9/2006 ...
The influence of the family and home environment on childhood physical activity (PA) and whether this differs between ethnic groups remains uncertain. This paper investigates associations between family and home factors and childhood PA in a multi-ethnic population and explores whether associations differ between ethnic groups. Methods Cross-sectional study of 9...
Background Most public transit users walk to and from transit. We analyzed the relationship between transit commuting and objectively measured physical activity. Methods Adults aged 20 to 65 working outside the home (n = 1237) were randomly selected from neighborhoods in Seattle and Baltimore regions. Neighborhoods had high or low median income and high ...