More of the same or a change of scenery: an observational study of variety and frequency of physical activity in British children

Table 1 Descriptive characteristics of the sample of children from the SPEEDY study used in these analyses

	Total (n = 1700)	Girls (n = 953)	Boys (n = 747)	P-value
Age (years)	10.3 ± 0.3	10.3 ± 0.3	10.2 ± 0.3	0.282
Height (cm)	140.6 ± 6.7	140.7 ± 6.7	140.5 ± 6.6	0.587
Weight (kg)	36.6 ± 8.4	37.2 ± 8.8	35.8 ± 7.6	<0.001
BMI (kg/m ² )	18.2 ± 3.1	18.5 ± 3.4	17.9 ± 2.8	<0.001
MVPA (mins/day)	73.8 ± 24.6	66.0 ± 20.8	83.8 ± 25.5	<0.001
Sedentary time (mins/day)	456.9 ± 53.9	461.7 ± 51.7	450.8 ± 56.2	<0.001
Weight status
Non-overweight	1308 (77)	707 (74)	601 (80)	Ref
Overweight/obese	392 (23)	246 (26)	146 (20)	0.001
Activity status
Not meeting government PA guidelines	526 (31)	387 (41)	139 (19)	Ref
Meeting government PA guidelines	1174 (69)	566 (59)	608 (81)	<0.001
Parent/guardian education level
GCSE or lower	649 (38)	383 (40)	266 (36)	Ref
A-level or lower vocational	707 (42)	388 (41)	319 (43)	0.116
University or higher vocational	344 (20)	182 (19)	162 (22)	0.075
Location†
Rural	557 (33)	293 (31)	264 (36)	Ref
Suburban	489 (29)	292 (31)	197 (27)	0.029
Urban	623 (37)	351 (38)	272 (37)	0.274

Data are presented as mean ± standard deviation and n (%) for categorical variables.
Ref is the reference category.
Differences between Girls and Boys (p-value presented in Table 1) were determined using multilevel linear or logistic regression depending on whether the dependent variable was continuous or categorical.
†31 participants included in the main analysis had missing data for location, the descriptive characteristics presented in Table 1 for location are based on the 1669 participants (936 girls, 733 boys) with data available.
SPEEDY Sports, Physical activity and Eating behaviour: Environmental Determinants in Young people, BMI body mass index, MVPA moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, PA physical activity, GCSE General certificate of secondary education.

ISSN: 1471-2458