8 The Effect of Decreased Physical Activity on Physical and Mental Health of School-Aged Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background School-aged children are recommended to complete at least one hour of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity per day. North American data has shown that due to COVID-19 restrictions placed on in person schooling and extracurricular activities, children were not meeting recommended levels of physical activity. Additional barriers to activity during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic included lack of access to public facilities including community centers, parks, and outdoor recreation. Decreased physical activity in children has been shown to have a negative impact on both physical and mental health, and childhood development. However, there is a paucity of literature on parents’ perceptions of the association between physical activity and physical and mental health. Objectives The objective of this study was to gain a better understanding of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on levels of physical activity and parents’ perceptions surrounding physical activity and physical and mental health. Design/Methods An online survey was distributed to parents of school-aged children aged 4-13 in Ontario. The survey included questions regarding demographics, children’s physical activity prior to and during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and parental perceptions regarding the pandemic’s impact on mental and physical health. This study received ethics approval, was hosted on the REDCapTM platform, and distributed from February-June 2021 through a local school board, the Pediatrics section of the Ontario Medical Association, and through social media. Results Of 361 participants, 90.4% strongly agreed that physical activity was important for mental health, and 92.2% strongly agreed that physical activity was important for physical health. There was a statistically significant decrease in the overall mean number of hours of physical activity per week between pre-COVID and the first wave of COVID (mean difference = 9.34 hours, SD = 10.06, p<0.001). Additionally, parents of children with decreased physical activity reported a statistically significant negative impact on physical and mental health as compared to parents whose children had no change in amount of physical activity. Decreased energy, poor sleep, increased anxiety, mood disturbances, and disruptive behaviour were noted by over 50% of respondents. Conclusion This survey highlights that parents themselves perceived a significant negative impact on children’s mental and physical well-being with decreased physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This emphasizes the importance of retaining access to recreational facilities and extracurricular activities. Future research includes identifying ways to re-engage parents and children with physical activity during times of decreased access.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".