Psychosocial Physical Activity Laboratory, Kinesiology Department, College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, United States.
School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom.
Front Public Health. 2021 Apr 26;9:642932. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.642932. eCollection 2021.
Schools and outdoor public spaces play a substantial role in children's physical activity. Yet, the COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates bound many children to their available home spaces for learning, movement, and development. The exact effect this mandate had on children's physical activity may vary among families. To understand, from the perspective of parents, how the COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates affected children's physical activity, while also considering families' socioeconomic status. Open-ended survey. Online. Data were collected from 321 parents living in the United States of America. Parents answered an open-ended prompt to describe their children's physical activity during COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates. Following data collection, inductive and deductive content analysis examined patterns in the data. Analyses indicated that shelter-in-place mandates restricted children's opportunities for physical activity. However, if families had access to outdoor spaces or equipment, they could encourage and support more physical activity opportunities than those without. Families in the lower-income bracket had less access to outdoor space and subsequently those children had fewer opportunities to be physically active. Parents supported their children's physical activity through their involvement and encouragement. These findings underscore the importance of access to outdoor spaces and equipment for increasing children's physical activity. Findings can be used by educators and policymakers to equitably support families of lower socioeconomic status who reported less access to outdoor spaces.
学校和户外公共空间在儿童身体活动中起着重要作用。然而，由于 COVID-19 居家令，许多儿童只能在自家有限的空间内学习、运动和成长。这项命令对儿童身体活动的具体影响可能因家庭而异。本研究旨在从家长的角度了解 COVID-19 居家令如何影响儿童的身体活动，并同时考虑家庭的社会经济地位。采用开放式问卷调查。在线进行。数据收集自居住在美国的 321 位家长。家长们回答了一个开放式提示问题，描述了他们的孩子在 COVID-19 居家令期间的身体活动情况。在数据收集之后，采用归纳和演绎内容分析法对数据中的模式进行了分析。分析表明，居家令限制了儿童身体活动的机会。然而，如果家庭有户外空间或设备，他们可以比没有这些条件的家庭更能鼓励和支持更多的身体活动机会。低收入家庭的户外空间较少，因此这些孩子的身体活动机会也较少。家长通过参与和鼓励来支持孩子的身体活动。这些发现强调了获得户外空间和设备对于增加儿童身体活动的重要性。研究结果可被教育工作者和政策制定者用来公平地支持那些报告户外空间较少的社会经济地位较低的家庭。
