Does SuperPark Make Children Less Sedentary? : How Visiting a Commercial Indoor Activity Park Affects 7 to 12 Years Old Children’s Daily Sitting and Physical Activity Time

Abstract
: Commercial indoor activity parks provide children with a variety of entertaining physical activities. This study examined whether visiting SuperPark affects total daily sitting and physical activity time. The participants (8 girls and 7 boys, aged 10.3 ± 1.9 years, height 144.5 ± 11.8 cm, body mass index (BMI) 19.3 ± 3.0 kg/m2 ) wore a thigh-worn accelerometer during a normal week and were provided free tickets to visit SuperPark on at least one day. On average, the children spent 3.3 ± 1.2 h in SuperPark. During the visits the children had 0.9 h less sitting (0.7 ± 0.3 h, p = 0.000) and 0.9 h more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA; 1.4 ± 0.6 h, p = 0.002) as compared to the reference periods on days without a SuperPark visit (1.6 ± 0.3 h sitting and 0.5 ± 0.4 h MVPA). During the days when visiting SuperPark, sitting time decreased 1.0 h (5.8 ± 0.9 h, p = 0.008) and MVPA increased 0.8 h (3.0 ± 1.0 h, p = 0.017) as compared to the reference days (6.8 ± 1.1 h sitting and 2.2 ± 0.8 h MVPA). The effects were more pronounced during weekdays than weekends. The children spent more than three hours in SuperPark on one visit, of which almost a half was MVPA. During the whole day, one hour of sitting was replaced with MVPA, suggesting that visiting SuperPark has the potential to improve health. Whether children continue visiting SuperPark and gain health benefits merits investigation.
Main Authors
Format
Articles Research article
Published
2018
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
MDPI AG
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-201807303646Use this for linking
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1661-7827
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15081595
Language
English
Published in
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Citation
  • Pesola, A. J., Melin, M., Vanhala, A., Gao, Y., & Finni Juutinen, T. (2018). Does SuperPark Make Children Less Sedentary? : How Visiting a Commercial Indoor Activity Park Affects 7 to 12 Years Old Children’s Daily Sitting and Physical Activity Time. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(8), Article 1595. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15081595
License
CC BY 4.0Open Access
Copyright© the Authors, 2018.

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