Abstract
Objective: Today, a majority of the world population is dealing with physical inactivity and related health problems.Moreover, while various interventions are being adopted to increase children’s physical activity, these are mostly lessoreven un-successful. One of the possible reasons for this could be the wrong timing for their instalment. Therefore,the purpose of our study is to analyse between-day and within-day physical activity in 5- to 8-year old children.
Methods: Using accelerometers we monitored 97 Slovenian children (49 males) for five consecutive days.
Results: We found that 5- to 8- year old Slovenian children are physically active on average between 689 and795 counts per minute, with age and gender significant factors, however both with low effect size. The averagedata was in line with the trends of the world’s population. Time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity wasnever measured in 5- to 8- year old children and we found it to be significantly longer than in slightly older children.Furthermore, we have defined the time periods with the lowest physical activity, which is in the morning, after thebreakfast. Additionally, there are some age differences, with 5-year olds being most active before lunch but lessphysically active in the early afternoon.
Conclusions: In conclusion we have to emphasize and implicate to next generation studies to indicate time periodswith the lowest physical activity and to promote physical activity interventions in those periods to achieve the greatestimpact.