Syfte
The purpose of the article is to investigate the potential that staff-led interventions with guidance can have in increasing children’s physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviour. The study looks at the difference between how many minutes the children were active and how many steps the children took during the course of a day before and after the interventions.
Resultat
The interventions increased the children’s physical activity in all respects, except high-energy physical activity. The reason for this may be that no goals were set that directly affected this type of activity. After the interventions, several children reached the recommended goal of being active for more than 60 minutes a day. The children walked approximately 10,000 steps more and reduced sedentary behaviour by 70 minutes after the intervention period. The intervention groups increased physical activity at all times of the day, except early in the morning and during meal breaks. The comparison of physical activity levels before and after the interventions shows that the children who scored lowest before the interventions progressed the most.
Design
The article investigates children’s physical activity at eleven public kindergartens in Sandefjord Municipality in Norway. 116 children were included, all of whom were three or four years old. The children were divided into six random intervention groups and five random control groups. Accelerometers were used to measure the children’s physical activity. These were attached to the children in the morning and removed when the children went home. The interventions lasted for a period of twelve weeks.
Referenser
Andersen, E., Øvreås, S., Jørgensen, K. A., Jenssen, J. B. & Moser, T. (2020) «Children’s physical activity level and sedentary behaviour in Norwegian early childhood education and care: effects of a staff-led cluster-randomised controlled trial». BMC Public Health, 20(2020):artikkel 1651.
Uppdragsgivare
Sandefjord Municipality, Norway. Norwegian Directorate of Health, Norway