This review and meta-analysis (PROSPERO registration number: CRD42020138845) critically evaluates test-retest reliability, concurrent validity and criterion validity of different physical activity ...(PA) levels of three most commonly used international PA questionnaires (PAQs) in official language versions of European Union (EU): International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ-SF), Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ), and European Health Interview Survey-Physical Activity Questionnaire (EHIS-PAQ). In total, 1749 abstracts were screened, 287 full-text articles were identified as relevant to the study objectives, and 20 studies were included. The studies' results and quality were evaluated using the Quality Assessment of Physical Activity Questionnaires checklist. Results indicate that only ten EU countries validated official language versions of selected PAQs. A meta-analysis revealed that assessment of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) is the most relevant PA level outcome, since no publication bias in any of measurement properties was detected while test-retest reliability was moderately high (r
= 0.74), moderate for the criterion (r
= 0.41) and moderately-high for concurrent validity (r
= 0.72). Reporting of methods and results of the studies was poor, with an overall moderate risk of bias with a total score of 0.43. In conclusion, where only self-reporting of PA is feasible, assessment of MVPA with selected PAQs in EU adult populations is recommended.
This study analyses the changes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in a cohort of boys and girls aged 11 (n = 50) and 14 (n = 50). Physical activity was assessed with Bodymedia ...SenseWear Pro Armband monitor for 6 days in October 2013 and October 2016, considering 90% of daily wear time (21h and 40min). The initial sample (n = 160) included the children who wore the monitors at age 11 but the final analyzed sample included only those children from the initial sample (n = 50), whose data fulfilled the inclusion criteria at age 11 and 14. Physical fitness and somatic characteristics of the final sample (n = 50) were compared to a representative sample of Slovenian schoolchildren at ages 11 (n = 385) and 14 (n = 236) to detect possible bias. Changes in MVPA were controlled for maturity using the timing of adolescent growth spurt as its indicator. The average MVPA decreased more than one quarter (34.96 min) from age 11 to age 14. Children were significantly more active at age 11 than at age 14 (p < 0.01, d = 0.39). The timing of puberty onset in girls was significantly earlier (12.01 ± 1.0 years) (p < 0.01) than in boys (13.2 ± 0.75 years) (p < 0.01, d = 1.35). There was a significant gender difference in moderate-to vigorous physical activity at age 14 (p < 0.05, η2 = 0.12) and between moderate-to vigorous physical activity at age 11 and 14 (η2 = 0.11). After controlling for the timing of adolescent growth spurt the girls at age 11 showed significantly higher level of physical activity than at age 14 (p < 0.01, η2 = 0.17). Early adolescence is crucial for the development of physical activity behaviours, which is especially pronounced in girls. The significant decline of MVPA between ages 11 and 14 in Slovenia are likely influenced by environmental changes since the timing of adolescent growth spurt did not prove as a factor underlying the decline of MVPA.
Blagus, R, Jurak, G, Starc, G, and Leskošek, B. Centile reference curves of the SLOfit physical fitness tests for school-aged children and adolescents. J Strength Cond Res 37(2): 328-336, 2023-The ...study provides sex- and age-specific centile norms of Slovenian children and youth. Physical fitness was assessed using the SLOfit test battery on population data, including 185,222 children, aged 6-19 years, measured in April and May 2018. Centile curves for both sexes and 12 test items were constructed using the generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape (GAMLSS). Boys generally achieved higher scores in most of the physical fitness tests, except in stand and reach, but this was not consistent throughout childhood and adolescence, nor did it pertain to the entire range of performance. Girls outperformed boys in the arm-plate tapping test throughout childhood; the poorest performing girls outperformed the poorest performing boys in the 600-m run, 60-m dash, backward obstacle course, and standing broad jump. The shapes and trends of physical fitness curves adequately reflect the effects of growth and development on boys' and girls' physical performance. Comparing the existing reference fitness curves showed that Slovenian children and adolescents display higher fitness levels than their peers from other countries. This study provides the most up-to-date sex- and age-specific reference fitness centile curves of Slovenian children, which can be used as benchmark values for health and fitness monitoring and surveillance systems.
Abstract
Using the population-based data we aim to estimate the general population trends of multiple components of physical fitness of children, identify critical structural changes in these trends, ...and evaluate the potential changes in differences in the test scores between the children. During the entire study period, 1989–2019, median body mass index and triceps skinfold increased in both genders and all age groups. Muscular fitness, in general, showed negative trends, with some exceptions: during the post-2010 period, children were mostly experiencing the improvement of isometric strength of the upper body. The neuromuscular components of physical fitness showed positive trends, especially in girls. Cardiorespiratory fitness has been declining in all age groups until the last decade, with the largest decreases occurring before 2000. In the last decade, the trends reversed. The flexibility indicator revealed the largest differences between boys and girls, with boys mainly experiencing negative and girls mostly positive trends. The variability of the test scores mostly increased during the study period. This increasing variance suggests that—despite generally favourable trends in the last decade—children in Slovenia have been facing increasing inequalities in their development, which can potentially lead to future inequalities in health.
This study examined the dynamics of teacher burnout over the course of the school year in relation to individual and environmental factors in the school context based on a three-wave panel design ...using an MBI-ES questionnaire and a self-constructed inventory to measure individual and environmental factors of burnout. The sample consisted of 718 teachers from 32 Slovenian primary schools; 163 of them participated in all measurements. The major limitation of this study is the high attrition rate. However, attrition analysis showed no significant differences between the initial sample and the panel group on background variables and burnout dimensions or on environmental and individual factors. Burnout was present but not pronounced among participating teachers: Emotional exhaustion was moderately high and depersonalization and personal accomplishment were low. Over the course of the school year, burnout did not increase consistently and gradually; we found only a statistically significant increase in personal accomplishment in the middle of the school year and a statistically significant greater sense of burnout at the end of the school year. As stress accumulates over time, we would expect burnout to increase. We hypothesize that participants reduced the effects of stress through various coping strategies and/or replenish their resources. We believe that the school year is not long enough for burnout to develop. The number of stressors perceived by teachers was significantly related to burnout rates. Teachers experience stress, especially in work not directly related to teaching, and from their own performance expectations. Multivariate regression analyses yielded three different but similar models of predictors of burnout that explained 25 to 50% of the variance in teacher burnout. Regardless of the instability of the models, the time and energy demands of working with students, teacher characteristics, and classroom management are the stable antecedents in the predictor models of teacher burnout.
Studies of the familial association of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) have increased in recent years. However, there is a lack of studies that have objectively examined the ...correlates between parents, grandparents, and childrens' PA. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to measure PA using accelerometers to determine the extent to which PA and SB correlate among parents, grandparents, and children. A sample of 169 children between 11-14 years (77 boys and 97 girls), 225 parents (98 males and 127 females) and 52 grandparents (16 males and 36 females) were recruited for the current study. Accelerometers RM42 (UKK Terveyspalvelut Oy, Tampere, Finland) were used to determine PA levels of children, parents and grandparents. Epoch was set to 1 s. Mothers' moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) was associated with children's MVPA (
< 0.05). After adjusting for age, BMI (child), and educational status, the results remain the same. Results of linear regression analyses for boys' sedentary time showed that fathers' sedentary time was significantly associated with boys (
< 0.01), but not with girls. The association of grandmothers' and grandfathers' MVPA activity with that of children showed that grandparents' MVPA, when adjusted for age, BMI, and educational status, was not a significant predictor (
> 0.05) of children's MVPA (total sample). In contrast, grandfathers' sedentary behavior was a significant predictor (β = 0.269;
< 0.05) of children's sedentary behavior (total sample). The results of the current study suggest that parental involvement in PA, particularly by mothers, is important for children's PA and, accordingly, healthy outcomes.
Understanding the growth pattern is important in view of child and adolescent development. Due to different tempo of growth and timing of adolescent growth spurt, individuals reach their adult height ...at different ages. Accurate models to assess the growth involve intrusive radiological methods whereas the predictive models based solely on height data are typically limited to percentiles and therefore rather inaccurate, especially during the onset of puberty. There is a need for more accurate non-invasive methods for height prediction that are easily applicable in the fields of sports and physical education, as well as in endocrinology. We developed a novel method, called Growth Curve Comparison (GCC), for height prediction, based on a large cohort of > 16,000 Slovenian schoolchildren followed yearly from ages 8 to 18. We compared the GCC method to the percentile method, linear regressor, decision tree regressor, and extreme gradient boosting. The GCC method outperformed the predictions of other methods over the entire age span both in boys and girls. The method was incorporated into a publicly available web application. We anticipate our method to be applicable also to other models predicting developmental outcomes of children and adolescents, such as for comparison of any developmental curves of anthropometric as well as fitness data. It can serve as a useful tool for assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring of somatic and motor development of children and youth.
Physical activity questionnaires (PAQs) are a popular method of monitoring physical activity, although their validity is usually low. Descriptions of physical activity levels in questionnaires ...usually rely on physical responses to physical activity. Therefore, we hypothesised that the validity of PAQs would be higher in the more physically fit group of participants. To test this, we conducted a validation study with 179 adults whom we divided into three fitness groups based on their cardiovascular fitness and age. Participants were measured for one week using the UKK RM42 accelerometer and self-reported their physical activity using IPAQ-SF, GPAQ, and EHIS-PAQ. We analysed the differences between fitness groups in terms of validity for each PAQ using ANOVA. We also performed an equivalence testing to compare the data obtained with the PAQs and the accelerometers. The results showed a significant trend toward higher validity for moderate to vigorous physical activity from the low to high fitness group as assessed by GPAQ and IPAQ-SF (low, intermediate and high fitness group: 0.06–0.21; 0.26–0.29; 0.40, respectively). The equivalence testing showed that all fitness groups overestimated their physical activity and underestimated their sedentary behaviour, with the high fitness group overestimating their physical activity the least. However, EHIS-PAQ was found to agree best with accelerometer data in assessing moderate to vigorous physical activity, regardless of fitness group, and had a validity greater than 0.4 for all fitness groups. In conclusion, we confirmed that when using PAQs describing physical responses to physical activity, participants’ fitness should be considered in the interpretation, especially when comparing results internationally.
It is unclear whether active commuting has the potential to improve children's health. This study examined the association of commuting mode and distance with children's cardiorespiratory fitness ...(CRF).
We conducted a cross-sectional study, including 713 Slovenian schoolchildren aged 12 to 15 years. Commuting modes were self-reported, and four commuting groups were constructed, while CRF was determined with a 20-m shuttle run test. The distance from home to school was calculated using the Geographic Information System. Effects of commuting mode and distance, controlling for age, gender and amount of total physical activity, were evaluated using general two linear models (one for each direction of commuting to/from school).
The main effect of commuting group on CRF and its interaction with distance were significant in the direction from school to home (P = 0.013 and P = 0.028, respectively), but not in the opposite direction. Predicted differences in CRF between commuting groups were moderate and generally higher in males than in females. When comparing commuting group median distance from home to school, males driven by car had around 4 ml/min/kg lower predicted CRF than those who walked (P = 0.01) or used wheels commuting (e.g., bicycle, skateboard).
The distance of commuting had a small effect on CRF, except in the Car group where children who live close to school had significantly lower CRF than those living further away. Children driven by car who live within wheels or walk distance from school should be targeted by interventions promoting active transport.
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