Physical activity, sleep and regulated screen time are important health factors in children.

This project intends to investigate how different or the same grade fives are in terms of sleep, activity and screen time. Through a questionnaire I asked about how long they are on screen, what tech they own, when they wake up and go to bed as well as a few related topics. Then I compared the data of kids in different regions with each other and the guidelines I found on google scholar. I believe these topics all affect overall health. I am curious what similarities and differences exist for kids this age around the world.

First I made a questionnaire in Google forms. Then my mum helped me make a workflow on Dubsado So we could get an informed consent signed by a guardian before providing a link to the survey. Once a guardian signed the consent it would email them a link to the survey for their Grade 5 child to fill out. 

We left the survey up for one month. After taking in the results we had 90 responses. My dad and I then analysed the results. To confirm my first two hypotheses I calculated the results in Google Sheets. For the third I could calculate it in sheets but my dad helped me check if the result was significant using an independent samples t-test in SPSS. For the other three hypotheses, my dad helped me and we conducted a Pearson-r correlation in SPSS to determine if there was any significant correlation present.

Then I generated charts in a Google Sheet with all of my data in it. Then I decided what charts would be the best and formatted the chart correctly and represented all the data on my trifold.  

“Guidelines recommend ≥60 minutes per day of physical activity, ≤2 hours per day of screen time, and 9–12 hours per day of sleep for individuals aged 6–12 years” (Friel et al., 2020) 

Sleep guidelines

The minimum recommended sleep duration for school aged children is 9 hours per night. (Hirshkowitz et al., 2015 and Friel et al, 2020)

Physical activity guidelines

“60 min of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity daily, although more physical activity beyond 60 min of MVPA daily appears to be better for various health outcomes” (Chaput et al., 2020)

Screen use guidelines

It is recommended that daily screen time does not exceed 2 hours per day (Friel et al, 2020)

References

Chaput, JP., Willumsen, J., Bull, F., Chou, R., Ekelund, U., Firth, J., Jago, R., Ortega, F.B., & Katzmarzyk, P.T. (2020). WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour for children and adolescents aged 5–17 years: summary of the evidence. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 17(141). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-020-01037-z

Friel, C.P., Duran, A.T., Shecter, A., & Diaz, K.M. (2020). U.S. Children Meeting Physical Activity, Screen Time, and Sleep Guidelines. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 59(4) 513-521. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.05.007.

Hirshkowitz, M., Whiton, K., Albert, S.M., Alessi, C., Bruni, O., DonCarlos, L., Hazen, N., Herman, J., Adams-Hillard, P.J., Katz, E.S., Kheirandish-Gozal, L., Neubauer, D.N., O’Donnell, A.E., Ohayon, M., Peever, J., Rawding, R., Sachdeva, R.C., Setters, B., Vitiello, M.V., & Ware, J.C. (2015) National Sleep Foundation’s updated sleep duration recommendations: Final report. Sleep Health. 1(4) 233-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2015.10.004.

I really enjoyed doing this project and I learned that in some ways kids are different but all kids are relatively the same. I learned that around the world there are different social media platforms that I had never heard of. On the topic of social media I learned that once a kid gets a phone they are much more likely get on social media. I also found that the countries with the most kids with phones had the least average amount of sleep.

I learned that it is very important for kids to get physical activity in school. The average amount of time spent in sports outside of school was similar around the world but outside of Canada the kids were not getting as much physical activity in school. Therefore, more kids were not meeting the guidelines for total physical activity. I found that kids who got more physical activity reported feeling less tired in the morning. 

One major limitation of the study was that it did not have a large enough group of people, therefore  we did not have an accurate representation of each participating country. I would like to see this done with a larger study

Chaput, JP., Willumsen, J., Bull, F., Chou, R., Ekelund, U., Firth, J., Jago, R., Ortega, F.B., & Katzmarzyk, P.T. (2020). WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour for children and adolescents aged 5–17 years: summary of the evidence. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 17(141). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-020-01037-z

Friel, C.P., Duran, A.T., Shecter, A., & Diaz, K.M. (2020). U.S. Children Meeting Physical Activity, Screen Time, and Sleep Guidelines. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 59(4) 513-521. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.05.007.

Hirshkowitz, M., Whiton, K., Albert, S.M., Alessi, C., Bruni, O., DonCarlos, L., Hazen, N., Herman, J., Adams-Hillard, P.J., Katz, E.S., Kheirandish-Gozal, L., Neubauer, D.N., O’Donnell, A.E., Ohayon, M., Peever, J., Rawding, R., Sachdeva, R.C., Setters, B., Vitiello, M.V., & Ware, J.C. (2015) National Sleep Foundation’s updated sleep duration recommendations: Final report. Sleep Health. 1(4) 233-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2015.10.004.

Stefan Underwood (My Dad)

Michael Underwood (my Uncle)

Mallory Underwood (My Mom)

Brenna Fraser (My Principle)