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School policies and practices associated with Thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity

School has a significant role in providing opportunities for children to engage in physical activity (PA) through policies and practices. This study aimed to identify the prevalence of school policies and practices related to physical activity (PA) and their association with Thai students’ overall a...

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Autores principales: Amornsriwatanakul, Areekul, Lester, Leanne, Rosenberg, Michael, Bull, Fiona
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7822510/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33481937
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245906
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author Amornsriwatanakul, Areekul
Lester, Leanne
Rosenberg, Michael
Bull, Fiona
author_facet Amornsriwatanakul, Areekul
Lester, Leanne
Rosenberg, Michael
Bull, Fiona
author_sort Amornsriwatanakul, Areekul
collection PubMed
description School has a significant role in providing opportunities for children to engage in physical activity (PA) through policies and practices. This study aimed to identify the prevalence of school policies and practices related to physical activity (PA) and their association with Thai students’ overall and domain specific PA. This cross-sectional analysis included 5,830 students aged 6–17 years from 136 schools recruited though a multi-stage stratified cluster sampling across Thailand. Student’s PA data were assessed using a student survey and school data were collected by a principal survey. Associations between students’ PA and school variables were examined using logistic regressions. Despite a high prevalence of Thai schools reporting many policies and practices promoting PA in different areas, students reported low levels of PA. None of the school PA policies and practices was associated with students’ overall and domain specific activities, with active transport as the one exception. When schools had an active transport policy, students were 40% (OR = 1.40, p = 0.01) more likely to travel actively to/from school. The identified positive relationship between school active transport policy and students’ active travel behavior suggests a potential wider adoption of the policy promoting school active transport aiming to increase student’s PA levels among all Thai schools. Intervention studies are necessary to confirm this finding. Our study also reflected that, for greater levels of children’s school-based PA, strategies to translate the existing school PA policies into effective implementation should be an emphasis for Thai schools.
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spelling pubmed-78225102021-01-29 School policies and practices associated with Thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity Amornsriwatanakul, Areekul Lester, Leanne Rosenberg, Michael Bull, Fiona PLoS One Research Article School has a significant role in providing opportunities for children to engage in physical activity (PA) through policies and practices. This study aimed to identify the prevalence of school policies and practices related to physical activity (PA) and their association with Thai students’ overall and domain specific PA. This cross-sectional analysis included 5,830 students aged 6–17 years from 136 schools recruited though a multi-stage stratified cluster sampling across Thailand. Student’s PA data were assessed using a student survey and school data were collected by a principal survey. Associations between students’ PA and school variables were examined using logistic regressions. Despite a high prevalence of Thai schools reporting many policies and practices promoting PA in different areas, students reported low levels of PA. None of the school PA policies and practices was associated with students’ overall and domain specific activities, with active transport as the one exception. When schools had an active transport policy, students were 40% (OR = 1.40, p = 0.01) more likely to travel actively to/from school. The identified positive relationship between school active transport policy and students’ active travel behavior suggests a potential wider adoption of the policy promoting school active transport aiming to increase student’s PA levels among all Thai schools. Intervention studies are necessary to confirm this finding. Our study also reflected that, for greater levels of children’s school-based PA, strategies to translate the existing school PA policies into effective implementation should be an emphasis for Thai schools. Public Library of Science 2021-01-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7822510/ /pubmed/33481937 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245906 Text en © 2021 Amornsriwatanakul et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Amornsriwatanakul, Areekul
Lester, Leanne
Rosenberg, Michael
Bull, Fiona
School policies and practices associated with Thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity
title School policies and practices associated with Thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity
title_full School policies and practices associated with Thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity
title_fullStr School policies and practices associated with Thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity
title_full_unstemmed School policies and practices associated with Thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity
title_short School policies and practices associated with Thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity
title_sort school policies and practices associated with thai children’s overall and domain specific physical activity
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7822510/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33481937
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245906
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