Global Changes in Child and Adolescent Physical Activity During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Importance: Numerous physical distancing measures were implemented to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus, which could have negatively affected child and adolescent physical activity levels. Objectives: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature that used validated measures to document changes in child and adolescent physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic and to estimate whether changes in physical activity differed between participant-level, contextual, and methodological moderators. Data Sources: PubMed, PsycInfo, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, Scopus, CINAHL, and MEDLINE were searched (from January 1, 2020, to January 1, 2022). A total of 1085 nonduplicate records were retrieved. Study Selection: Studies were included if they reported (1) changes in the duration of physical activity at any intensity for children or adolescents (age ≤18 years) comparing before and during the COVID-19 pandemic using validated physical activity measurement tools and were (2) from general population samples, (3) peer-reviewed, and (4) published in English. Data Extraction and Synthesis: A total of 126 articles underwent full-text review. Data were analyzed using a random-effects meta-analysis, which was conducted in January 2022. Main Outcomes and Measures: Change in the duration of engagement in physical activity at any intensity comparing before and during COVID-19. Results: Twenty-two studies including 46 independent samples and 79 effect sizes from 14 216 participants (median age, 10.5 years; range, 3-18 years) were included. The percentage change in the duration of engagement in total daily physical activity from before to during COVID-19 was -20% (90% CI, -34% to -4%). Moderation analyses revealed that changes were larger for higher-intensity activities (-32%; 90% CI, -44% to -16%), corresponding to a 17-minute reduction in children's daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels. The reduction in physical activity was also larger for samples located at higher latitudes (37%; 90% CI, -1% to 89%) and for studies with a longer duration between physical activity assessments (25%; 90% CI, -0.5% to 58%). Conclusions and Relevance: Children and adolescents have experienced measurable reductions in physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings underscore the need to provide bolstered access to support and resources related to physical activity to ensure good health and social functioning among children and adolescents during pandemic recovery efforts.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.019 | 0.044 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.013 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
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".