According to the recommendations of the World Health Organization, children should be moderate to vigorous physical activity per day for a minimum of 60 minutes. These recommendations meets 86% of Slovenian boys and 76% of girls aged 6 to 18 meet these recommendations (Sember, Starc, Jurak, et al., 2016). The purpose of our research was to determine the factors fort he physically inactive arrival of children to and back from school. The study included participants from a more extensive study of transversal monitoring of physical development of children – ARTOS (Jurak, Kovač and Starc, 2013). The sample includes primary school students over the age of 11, measured in the fall of 2013, and their parents, who also answered the questionnaire. The study involved 1429 individuals, 762 men and 667 women. They answered questions about their way of commuting to school, and also chose among the reasons for their choice. Parents also chose among the causes and provided informations on their children's physical data at birth and at the time of measurement. The participants were analyzed separately by sex and basic statistics were made. Graphically and statistically, we checked the normality of the data distribution. We performed a frequency distribution of the reasons for choosing one transport. With the hi square tesst, we looked for differences in education, socioeconomic status, level of support and assessment of one's own physical activity, between the parents of a group of children who were driven to school and the others. We foud that 439 children commute to school and back in a physically inactive way, which is 30,7% of all tested. Both boys and girls most often come to school by public transport (17,9%). The most common reason fort his was the distance of the school from home, where there are differences between parents and children (p=0,000). For all other reasons, there is no disagreement between them (p value ranged between 0,099 and 0,970). We confirmed the hypothesis that there are differences in the physical activity of the parents between the group of drivers and the other children, but the connection is negative. More parents who are more physically active drive their children to school by car than those who are less physically active. There are also no differences in socio-economic status between driven and non-drive children. We also wanted to find out the impact of parental education on the way a child commutes to school. Most parents had a high school education (4 or 5 years). Regardless of the level of education, the most common way to get to school was by car and back on foot. It is not true that these children are more likely to have siblings who go to school. . We also found that children with more support are equaly physically active on the way to school as the others (p=0,103).
|
