Are children and adolescents less active if parents restrict their physical activity and active transport due to perceived risk?

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Abstract

The study examined parental restriction of children’s active transport and physical activity outside school hours due to safety concerns, and how this restriction was associated with perceived risk and with youth physical activity levels. We used a cross-sectional design with data from children aged 10–11 years (n = 170) and adolescents aged 15–17 years (n = 270) who participated in the five-year follow-up of the Children Living in Active Neighbourhoods longitudinal study in Melbourne, Australia. Walking/cycling to local destinations was survey-reported. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) was recorded during non-school hours using accelerometers. Using surveys, parents reported perceived risk of their children being harmed in their neighbourhood, and restrictions they placed on their children’s physical activity. Linear regression analyses examined how perceived risk, constrained behaviour, and physical activity were related. We found that perceived risk did not vary by age-group and was positively associated with constrained behaviour among adolescents but not children. Children were subject to higher levels of constrained behaviour than adolescents. Constrained behaviour was negatively associated with active transport among younger boys and among girls in both age-groups. Furthermore, it was negatively associated with younger boys’ MVPA on weekends and with adolescent girls’ MVPA during evenings. There were no associations between constrained behaviour and active transport or MVPA among adolescent boys. The findings demonstrate that constrained behaviour exhibited by parents may result in lower levels of active transport and of MVPA outside school hours. In particular, this was true for children and adolescent girls. Social interventions to improve perceived safety and physical interventions involving redesign of the built environment to improve actual safety may help to ease parental restriction of their children’s active transport and physical activity in their neighbourhood.

Introduction

Road safety and ‘stranger danger’ are major causes of parental anxiety in relation to children’s safety in the neighbourhood, and such concerns may cause parents to restrict their children’s outdoor play and active transport (Carver et al., 2008a, Hillman et al., 1990, Mullan, 2003, Tranter and Pawson, 2001). Increasingly, children’s leisure time is spent indoors using electronic entertainment media rather than playing outdoors (Karsten, 2005, Tandy, 1999). In addition, participation rates in active transport (especially walking/cycling to/from school) have declined (Hillman et al., 1990, Salmon et al., 2005). It is possible that if parents restrict their children’s activity within the neighbourhood, their children may be less active overall, as time spent outdoors is positively associated with children’s overall physical activity (Klesges et al., 1990, Sallis et al., 1993). Furthermore, such children may miss out on the health benefits associated with regular physical activity during childhood/adolescence (Bailey and Martin, 1994, Raitakari et al., 1994).

Road safety is clearly a concern for both parents and children (Gielen et al., 2004, Hillman et al., 1990, Matthews, 1995, Mullan, 2003, Timperio et al., 2004, Tranter and Pawson, 2001), and has been cited as a major reason for parents restricting their children’s independent mobility (Hillman et al., 1990) and unsupervised outdoor play (Valentine & McKendrick, 1997). Furthermore a study (Timperio et al., 2004) which compared parents’ and children’s perceptions of road safety found that parental rather than children’s perceptions of road safety had stronger associations with children’s walking and cycling in the neighbourhood, suggesting that parents influence and/or control these behaviours. An earlier study (Hillman et al., 1990) demonstrated that parents’ concerns about road safety cause them to restrict their children’s unaccompanied journeys home from school. The findings of both these studies (Hillman et al., 1990, Timperio et al., 2004) suggest that due to the perceived risk of their children being harmed, parents may engage in constrained behaviour with regard to their children’s physical activity.

Constrained behaviour is described by Ferraro (1995) as the modification of routine habits and activities through limitations in time, place or frequency. He identifies fear and constrained behaviour as possible responses to perceived risk of victimization. The concepts of risk and fear appear frequently in the literature on safety, and the terms are often used without clear definition. Perception of risk involves cognitive assessment, while fear is an emotional response to risk perceptions and may include specific patterns of physiological responses such as a surge in adrenalin. Depending on the degree of perceived risk, constrained behaviour may result (Ferraro, 1995).

Constrained behaviour may be classed as either ‘avoidance behaviour’, where there is no further engagement in habits and activities due to perceived risk, or ‘defensive behaviour’, where habits and activities are altered in an attempt to reduce perceived risk (Ferraro, 1995). Examples of avoidance behaviour include parents driving their children to school instead of allowing them to walk or cycle there, or forbidding unsupervised outdoor play. Examples of defensive behaviour include parental accompaniment while walking to school and restriction of outdoor play to the backyard. Although descriptive studies exist, there is little empirical evidence of the extent and type of parental restriction of children’s physical activity and the effect of these restrictions on children’s physical activity. There is growing interest in studying constrained behaviour in relation to the built environment and crime in the neighbourhood. Studies in which adults constrained their own physical activity due to crime and safety concerns have been reviewed by Foster and Giles-Corti (2008), but few studies have focused on parental constraint of their children’s physical activity.

The aims of this study were to examine parents’ constrained behaviour with regard to their children’s active transport and physical activity outside school hours; to describe associations between parents’ constrained behaviour and their children’s active transport or physical activity outside school hours; and to examine associations between perceived risk and constrained behaviour.

Section snippets

Sample

Cross-sectional data presented in this paper were drawn from the five-year follow-up (2001–2005) of the Children Living in Active Neighbourhoods (CLAN) study. Earlier phases of the survey did not include assessment of perceived risk or constrained behaviour. Although sampling methods were published previously (Telford et al., 2004, Telford et al., 2005, Timperio et al., 2004), a brief description follows. At baseline (2001), children were recruited from 19 government primary schools in ten high

Data analyses

Independent sample t-tests were performed to examine differences in active transport, MVPA, avoidance behaviour, defensive behaviour and perceived risk according to sex and age-group. For each of the four sex by age-groups, linear regression analyses were performed to examine associations between avoidance/defensive behaviour and active transport/MVPA and between perceived risk and avoidance/defensive behaviour. Analyses were not adjusted for recruitment-associated clusters as there was no

Results

Data were analyzed for 170 children (51% boys) and 270 adolescents (43% boys) with mean ages 11.1 (SD 0.4) and 16.3 (SD 0.6) years, respectively. Some participants were excluded from analyses due to incomplete data. Families could elect not to participate in any component of the data collection. Parent surveys were completed mainly by mothers (87%). Most parents who completed the survey were married (78%) and almost half (48%) were tertiary educated.

On average, adolescents made significantly

Discussion

This study is among the first to examine relative associations of parental perception of risk, constrained behaviour and children’s physical activity. While many studies report parental concerns about road safety and strangers (Carver et al., 2008a, Gielen et al., 2004, Hillman et al., 1990, Matthews, 1995, Mullan, 2003, Timperio et al., 2004, Tranter and Pawson, 2001), there is a paucity of data on parents’ perceived likelihood of their children being injured as pedestrians or cyclists, or of

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Health & Medical Research Council (grant ID: 274309), Australia. Anna Timperio and David Crawford are each supported by Public Health Research Fellowships from the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation. Kylie Hesketh is supported by a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the National Health & Medical Research Council and National Heart Foundation of Australia.

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