Changes in preschool children’s movement behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic
Refereed conference paper presented and published in conference proceedings
CUHK Authors
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AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to many changes in daily routines of our lives. With tightened social distancing measures, face-to-face schooling for preschool children in many areas around the world have been suspended. Children in rural areas might also be restricted to stay indoors within confined space. For young children, such changes may lead to changes in their daily movement patterns, which may have implications on their physical health. In this study, we examined how preschool-aged children’s movement behaviors, including their sedentary behaviors, physical activity, and sleep, were affected by the pandemic. Preschool children from Hong Kong (N = 25, age = 4.4 years, SD = 0.3) wore ActiGraph wGT3X-BT accelerometers before the COVID outbreak (April to December 2019) and after preschools have been suspended for approximately 5 months (June 2020). Data collected over a three-day period between were extracted and used for analyses. A compositional multivariate regression model for repeated measures was used to examined changes in the relative amount of time children spent on different movement behaviors. The results suggested that children had less proportion of time (9%) in sedentary, but spent more time in sleep (8%) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (16%). Increased sleep durations were due to later bedtimes (33 minutes) and wake up time (78 minutes). The proportion of children meeting World Health Organization guidelines for movement behaviors were similar across both timepoints. The results suggest that school attendance might have negatively impacted young children’s physical activity in Hong Kong. This may be due to long durations of sedentary instructions at schools, and can be negated by additional active learning experiences in the classroom. Nonetheless, the lack of face-to-face instruction may also impact children’s motor skill development, which should be examined in further studies.
All Author(s) ListHa AS, Ng JYY, He Q, Chan CHS, Okely A, Chong KH
Name of ConferenceAIESEP 2021 Scientific Conference
Start Date of Conference08/06/2021
End Date of Conference10/06/2021
Place of ConferenceBanff, Canada
Country/Region of ConferenceCanada
Year2021
LanguagesEnglish-United States
