RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Effect of Demographic and Lifestyle Factors on Mode of Travel in School-Aged Children in The UK: A cross-Sectional Study From Understanding Society
Sahar Fadl*, Omer Kheir
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 10
First Page: 177
Last Page: 186
Publisher ID: TOPHJ-10-177
DOI: 10.2174/1874944501710010177
Article History:
Received Date: 20/06/2017Revision Received Date: 07/08/2017
Acceptance Date: 11/08/2017
Electronic publication date: 30/09/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Increasing levels of physical inactivity is associated with growing trends of childhood obesity.
Objective:
We aim to study the effect of socio-demographic as well as lifestyle factors on mode of travel to and from school in children from 10 to 15-year-old.
Methods:
4,497 school-aged children from the first wave of Understanding Society database. A cross-sectional design was used to examine the relationship between active travel with demographic and lifestyle factors.
Results:
Multivariate analyses show that children ages 13 to 15 years were more likely to travel actively compared to younger peers (OR=1.92,95%CI:1.65-2.23). Those engaged in sporting activity 3 times or greater than per week were more likely to actively travel compared to those engaged in less than twice per week (OR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.02 to 1.43) and those eating fast food once or less than per week were more likely to travel actively compared to unhealthy eaters.
Conclusion:
Sports activity 3 times or greater than per week and eating fast food once or less than per week are positively associated with children being active travellers.