The Habitual Physical Activity Patterns of Inner-City Children

Background/Purpose: Understanding the physical activity patterns of youth is an essential step in addressing the obesity epidemic and, ultimately, developing programs that reverse this trend. The importance of understanding the physical activity patterns of youth has resulted in an explosion of surveillance studies that explore the habitual activity patterns of youth. To date, however, most of these investigations have included Caucasian children living in suburban communities or children living in the Southern United States. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the habitual physical activity patterns of Hispanic and African American children living in a Northeastern United States urban environment.

Method: Participants included 39 children from the inner-city (10.5±0.61 years old; 78% African-American, 14% Hispanic; 85% free or reduced lunch; BMI 20.3±4.3 with 45% classified as overweight/obese. Children wore a Yamax-Digiwalker pedometer for 7 consecutive days during the winter of 2012. Children were prompted to record their step counts each day by their teacher and/or the research team and were given reminder letters so that their parents could prompt them on the weekend. Means and standard deviations were calculated and t tests and ANOVAs were utilized to examine difference across gender and day of the week.

Analysis/Results: The children averaged 9,535±2,594 steps over the course of the seven days (5 weekdays and 2 weekend days). The weekday step count mean was 10,090±2,939, and the weekend step count was 7,557±4,337, Δ = 2,533. A paired samples t-test revealed that students were significantly more active during the week [t(16)=2.38, p =.03]. Children averaged 10,610±2,842 steps on physical education weekdays and 8,338±2,802 steps on non physical education weekdays. A paired samples t-test [t(30)=4.7, p =.00, Δ= 2,272] indicated that children were significantly more active on physical education days.

Conclusions: Very few children in the current sample are meeting daily step recommendations. Our results support previous research that suggests that the ‘suburban built’ environment (broadly defined) is more conducive to promoting physical activity than the inner-city environment. Our sample was less active than those in most of the other studies exploring physical activity in elementary aged children. Our findings (compared to previous research) found reduced physical activity among African American children and youth, especially girls, and among children and youth living in an inner-city. Physical education appears to increase the daily activity of this population, suggesting the need to increase the frequency of physical education classes. Relatedly, increased physical activity opportunities are needed on weekends.