Correlates of physical activity and sedentary behavior in children and adolescents during school recess: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SED) during school recess in children and adolescents are associated with numerous factors, such as age, gender, and adult engagement. Identifying these correlates can inform the design of recess programs and interventions in schools, while also providing evidence to support the establishment of future recess-related policies. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the correlates of PA and SED in children and adolescents during school recess. METHODS: A systematic search was conducted for studies published in PubMed, EBSCO, and Web of Science from May 2011 to December 2024. We conducted three rounds of literature screening, including removing duplicates, screening titles and abstracts, and full-text screening. This study followed the PRISMA guidelines. The risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias tool. The effect of interventions on PA and SED was assessed by random effects meta-analysis. Identified factors were categorized using the social ecological model. RESULTS: 72 studies were included in this systematic review. Multiple factors, including age, gender, Body Mass Index (BMI), family economic status, length and frequency of school recess, structured recess, provision of exercise equipment, and playground markings, have been identified as being positively associated with PA among children and adolescents during school recess. Gender factors are also associated with SED. The meta-analysis included 6 studies. Overall results indicated that interventions implemented during school recess had an impact on Light PA (SMD = 0.53; 95% CI = 0.14, 0.93; I²=83%), Moderate PA (SMD = 0.38; 95% CI = 0.16, 0.60; I²=25%), Vigorous PA (SMD = 0.26; 95% CI = 0.09, 0.44; I²=0%), and Moderate-to-Vigorous PA (SMD = 0.49; 95% CI = 0.09, 0.88; I²=86%) in children and adolescents. However, there was no statistically significant effect of the intervention on SED (SMD=-0.54; 95% CI=-1.15, -0.06; I²=91%) (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: This review identified several individual, social, physical environment, and organizational and policy level factors that correlate with PA among children and adolescents during school recess. However, it found a correlation only between gender at the individual level and SED. Therefore, future research should focus more on the relationship between social, physical environment, and organizational and policy level factors and SED among children and adolescents during school recess.
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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 | 0.016 | 0.047 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.020 | 0.039 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".