Neighborhood Built Environment and Physical Activity among Hong Kong Children: A Pilot Study Using GIS
Objective This study aimed to investigate the relationship between Geographic Information System (GIS)-measured neighborhood built environment and children's physical activity (PA) in Hong Kong.Methods Participants in this study were 81 children (boys =44) aged 7-11 years from a primary school in Hong Kong.Data were collected as part of a three-year longitudinal study:Understanding Children's Activity and Nutrition (UCAN).Children's PA was measured by using an ActiGraph GT3X accelerometer and a parent-report questionnaire.Total road length in the neighborhood and distance to the nearest recreational facility were measured by GIS (ArcMap 10.0).Children were classified into long road length group (LRLG,lying in the upper 50 percentile) vs.short road length group (SRLG,lying in the lower 50 percentile);and close to recreational facility group (CRFG,lying in the lower 50 percentile) vs.far to recreational facility group (FRFG,lying in the upper 50 percentile),respectively.Differences of children' s PA between LRLG and SRLG groups and between CRFG and FRFG groups were determined by one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) controlling for children's sex,age,BMI,and maternal education level using SPSS 17.0.Results Accelerometer data revealed that boys were more active than girls on both weekdays and weekend days.After controlling for children's sex,age,BMI,and maternal education level,ANCOVA showed that children in CRFG had a higher level of accelerometer-measured moderate-to-vigorous PA compared to children in FRFG (126.8 ± 34.4 vs.113.6 ± 27.1 minutes/day,P ＜ 0.05),whereas no differences were found for questionnairemeasured PA between CRFG and FRFG.No differences were found for accelerometer-and questionnairemeasured PA between LRLG and SRLG.Conclusion This pilot study provided preliminary evidence of the positive relationship between neighborhood recreational facility and children's PA in Hong Kong.Further research with representative sample and more comprehensive investigations into the neighborhood built environment is recommended for more robust evidence.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
