Physical Activity Across Different Settings in Children Attending Normal Schools and Sports Schools With Extra Compulsory Physical Education Lessons: Preliminary Finding from the CHAMPS-Study DK

Aim The school setting as basis for physical activity (PA) interventions has been highly promoted as ideal since any benefits from such interventions targeting children from all segments of the population potentially could contribute to alleviating social inequality in health. This study relies on data from the CHAMPS-study DK which is a large controlled school-based intervention study examining possible effects of extra physical education (PE) lessons in children (n>1200, age 6-12 years) attending public primary schools. Many of the project evaluation parameters (e.g. risk factors for lifestyle diseases, bone health and motor performance) are based on the assumption that children attending schools with extra PE will be more physically active. However, a detailed description of the primary exposure “PA” is of crucial importance before interpreting the observed results. Consequently, the aim of this study is to describe the level of PA across different settings in children attending normal schools and sports schools, respectively.

Methods At the sports schools, the compulsory PE curriculum was increased from 2 to 6 lessons per week (270 minutes in total) over a 3-years period. Children attending normal schools were offered the standard 2 PE lessons (90 minutes in total). PA was assessed with the GT3X Actigraph accelerometer during winter and summer/fall. Children were instructed to wear the device for 7 full consecutive days (except when showering or swimming) in order to capture their entire PA for each day. A customized software program (Propero) was used to extract accelerometer data across crucial settings (i.e. total days, school time, school breaks, PE lessons) based on school-class-specific time tables. Bicycling activities (potential confounder) were quantified by SMS-track.

Results The data reduction strategy is currently being thoroughly considered, and data analyses will begin as soon as consensus has been achieved. Results will be presented at the 2012 EYHS Symposium.