Relationship between children's physical activity and outdoor design features in schools of Dhaka

Abstract

REZWAN, SHEIKH MD. The Relationship between Children’s Physical Activity and Outdoor Design Features in Schools of Dhaka (Under the supervision of Dr Mohammed Zakiul Islam)

World Health Organization (WHO) developed the "Global Recommendations on Physical Activity for Health-2010" with the overall aim of providing national and regional level policy makers with guidance on the relationship between the frequency, duration, intensity, type and the total amount of physical activity needed for the prevention of NCDs (Non-communicable disease). One of the recommendations is, Children and youth aged 5–17 should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity daily. This study is about children living in urban areas, who are not allowed to go to the neighbourhood playgrounds, parks or streets because of fear of traffic, bullying and strangers. Also, rapid urbanization has resulted in a lack of open spaces in the city like Dhaka. As a result, they are encouraged to play in regulated environments within their homes or commercial recreation facilities. Research has found out that this controlled practice has long term consequences for their social, emotional competence and health hazards. This is a global issue, but for the children in developing cities like Dhaka, the case is alarming. Within this alarming situation, school is the only place where children can act willingly and the playground is the only place where they can play spontaneously. This outdoor space of school thus has the scope of contributing to the achievement of physical activity guidelines suggested by WHO. However, studies focusing on children in developing nations are limited. Research mainly focused on children in extreme poverty and social aspects. Some research recently focused on childhood obesity among urban school-going children, but studies related to the physical environment are rare. This study aims to investigate the relationship between children’s physical activity and outdoor design features in schools of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The main aim was to identify the specific built environment variables that are important for children’s physical activity. Correlation mixed method research was carried out involving 39 children of 12 to 17 years old from four different schools. Children’s physical activity was represented through Sedentary, Light, Moderate and Vigorous Activity Level, using accelerometer devices. In total 12 independent (outdoor design related) variables and 4 control (socio-demographic) variables were included. The first stage used a comparative analysis using accelerometer data of four schools to see whether changes in outdoor design are related to children’s physical activity. The second stage followed a correlational approach to find out the specific built environment variables that predicted higher levels of physical activity. This study also included qualitative attributes in the methods through focus group discussion, to get in-depth knowledge about children preference. Several significant findings identified relationships between outdoor design variables and children’s physical activity within its limited scope (small sample size). Additionally, two socio-demographic variables were found to be significant. Girls’ participation in moderate to vigorous activity was significantly lower than the boys. But a good number of participants (both boys and girls) were found who did not participate in moderate to vigorous activities at all. Age is negatively correlated to light, moderate and vigorous physical activity for both boys and girls.

A positive relationship with moderate and vigorous physical activity was found for outdoor space per student and outdoor play area per student. A negative relationship was found between the built area in school campuses and moderate PA. Also, some built environment variables (total outdoor area, ground surface area, tree canopy area and the semi-outdoor area) was found to be positively related with sedentary PA. This study questions general understanding of designing a school campus. In practice, the designer carefully tries to reduce paved area during designing outdoors in school, but this research shows paved surface ensures greater moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA). Besides that, providing more sitting facilities, play equipment, ensuring different types of behaviour settings was found to positively related with the MVPA of children.