Impact of the Childcare Physical Activity (PLAY) Policy on Young Children’s Physical Activity and Sedentary Time: A Pilot Clustered Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The importance of daily physical activity is crucial for healthy development during the early years. Currently, a formal written physical activity policy is lacking in Canadian childcare centers, but holds promise for offering consistent physical activity opportunities. With eight recommendations, the Childcare PLAY policy is an evidence-informed, institutional-level document, targeting children’s physical activity, outdoor play, and sedentary time. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the Childcare Physical Activity (PLAY) policy on the physical activity and sedentary time of young children (18 months–4 years) in childcare. Methods: Nine childcare centers in London, Ontario participated in the cluster, randomized controlled trial. The centers in the control condition (n = 4) continued their typical daily routines, while the centers in the intervention condition (n = 5) implemented the PLAY policy for eight weeks. To assess physical activity levels, toddlers and preschoolers wore ActiGraph wGT3X-BT accelerometers for five consecutive days during childcare hours, at baseline, mid- and post-intervention, and at the six-month follow-up. Raw accelerometry data were converted to 15 s epochs, and age- and device-specific cut-points were applied. The participants with two or more days of at least 5 h/day of wear-time at baseline, and at one additional time point, were included in the linear mixed-effects models. An adjusted alpha (p < 0.017) was used to account for multiple comparison bias. Results: A total of 148 children (31.92 ± 7.41 months) had valid accelerometry data. The intervention resulted in a significant increase in light physical activity among the participants in the experimental group at the six-month follow-up (+1.07 min/h, an 11.16% increase; p = 0.0017). The intervention did not have a statistically significant effect on the total physical activity, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, or sedentary time. Conclusions: The findings indicate that the Childcare PLAY policy was effective at increasing the toddlers’ and preschoolers’ light physical activity. This pilot intervention appears promising for supporting some improved movement behaviors among children in childcare settings; however, additional investigations are needed to explore the feasibility and effectiveness with larger and more-diverse samples.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".