The cross-sectional and prospective associations of parental practices and environmental factors with 24-hour movement behaviours among school-aged Asian children

Abstract

Background: Parental practices and neighbourhood environmental factors may influence children’s movement behaviours. We aimed to investigate the cross-sectional and prospective associations of parental practices and neighbourhood environmental factors with accelerometer-measured 24-hour movement behaviours (24h-MBs) among school-aged children in Singapore. Methods: The Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) study collected information on dimensions of parental practices and neighbourhood environment at age 5.5 years. Confrmatory factor analyses were performed to generate latent variables and used to compute overall parental practices [involvement in PA+support for PA+control of screen viewing context] and environmental scores [facilities for active play + active mobility facilitators + barriers-1]. Children wore an accelerometer on their non-dominant wrist for seven consecutive days at ages 5.5 and 8 years. The R-package GGIR 2.6 was used to derive moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA), light-intensity physical activity (LPA), inactivity, and total-sleep (napping+night sleep) minutes per day. Associations were determined using compositional data analysis with multivariate linear regression models, taking into account potential confounders. Results: Among 425 children (48% girls, 59% Chinese), higher parental involvement in PA, parental support for PA and overall parental practices were associated with 24h-MBs at ages 5.5 and 8 years, specifically with greater time spent in MVPA and less time being inactive relative to the remaining movement behaviours. The corresponding mean changes in the overall 24h-MB for increasing parental practices from lowest to highest scores (?2 to +2 z-scores) indicated potential increases of up to 15-minutes in MVPA, 20-minutes in LPA, 5-minutes in sleep duration, and a reduction of 40-minutes in inactivity at age 5.5 years. At age 8 years, this could translate to approximately 15-minutes more.