OTREC Events

Assessing Impacts of Time Use on Children’s Physical Fitness in Relation to Obesity & Diabetes Risk

April 25, 2014 12:00 pm - April 25, 2014 1:00 pm

Where: Room 204 of the Distance Learning Center Wing of the Urban Center at PSU
Speaker: Jessica Guo, Supervising Planner, Parsons Brinckerhoff
Topic: Assessing Impacts of Time Use on Children's Physical Fitness in Relation to Risk for Obesity and Diabetes
Summary: Researchers from the transportation, planning and health fields share the common goal of promoting physically active lifestyle. One challenge that researchers often face is the measurement of physical activity, particularly among children. This is because the sporadic nature of children’s physical activity patterns makes it difficult to recall and quantify such activities. Additionally, children’s lower cognitive functioning compared to adults prevents them from accurately recalling their activities. This presentation will describe the design and application of a novel self-report instrument - the Graphs for Recalling Activity Time (GReAT) - for measuring children’s activity time use patterns. The instrument was applied in a study of children’s risk for obesity and diabetes in a predominately Hispanic community in Milwaukee, WI. Time-use data for two weekdays and one weekend day were collected for various physical and sedentary activities. The data was then assessed against measurements of the children’s cardiovascular fitness, weight status and insulin resistance through exploratory analysis and structured equation modeling. Findings on GReAT’s reliability and new evidence on the impacts of time-use in different activities on children’s risk for obesity and diabetes will be discussed.

Stream the seminar live, or watch an archived video, when made available, through the link here.

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