None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
What does this project aim to do? One in three New Zealand children are overweight or obese, with Maori, Pacific, and those from more deprived households being disproportionately affected. Three key contributing behaviours are low levels of physical activity, excess time spent sedentary, and inadequate sleep. Although the health effects of these behaviours have traditionally been assessed in isolation, the consideration of all movement behaviours within a 24-hour period (i.e. sleep, sedentary, light, moderate, and vigorous activity) is shaping a fast-emerging field in health research called time-use epidemiology. This shift is clearly illustrated by new activity guidelines for children – recently replicated in NZ – that address all movement behaviours across the 24-hour day. Measuring adherence to these guidelines presents challenges though, as traditional techniques were not designed to capture and evaluate 24-hour movement patterns. In this study, we aim to figure out whether accelerometers (small motion sensors that are worn on the skin) are a simple and complete tool for measuring movement over the 24-hour period in children and teens. Who will take part? 160 children and teenagers between the ages of 8-16 from the greater Dunedin area, in New Zealand. Participants involved in this study will be asked to: o Wear five accelerometers (at multiple sites, including their wrist, hip, thigh, and lower back) for three days and three nights, including while they sleep. o Wear a video camera over the course of three days, just while they’re awake. It shows us what different activities they might be doing throughout their day. o Wear a sleep-monitoring device for one night at home. o Take part in some fun activity monitoring in a university lab environment. Research Impact: Important benefits should arise from this work. More accurate measurement of key behaviours should provide much-needed insight into how 24-hour movement patterns influence obesity and health, and perhaps explain inconsistencies across ethnic and sociodemographic groups. Most importantly, despite the existence of new 24-hour activity guidelines, simple tools for measurement and analysis do not exist, and there is considerable international interest in their development.
Interventions
TIME-2-MOVE is a 3-day validation study to determine the ability of the AX3 (an open-source accelerometer) and the Actigraph (arguably the most widely used accelerometer in children) to measure activity and sleep behaviours across the full 24-hour day (sleep, wake after sleep onset, sedentary, and light, moderate and vigorous activity) in relation to criterion measures of each behaviour (polysomnography for sleep, direct observation and video from wearable cameras for physical activity and seden
TIME-2-MOVE is a 3-day validation study to determine the ability of the AX3 (an open-source accelerometer) and the Actigraph (arguably the most widely used accelerometer in children) to measure activity and sleep behaviours across the full 24-hour day (sleep, wake after sleep onset, sedentary, and light, moderate and vigorous activity) in relation to criterion measures of each behaviour (polysomnography for sleep, direct observation and video from wearable cameras for physical activity and sedentary behaviour). The following will be used as our criterion measures: Sleep: home-based polysomnography (PSG) will be performed over one study night within the 3-day study period. A fundamental aspect of this is the ability to identify sleep-wake transitions, which is traditionally challenging with accelerometers. Physical activity and sedentary behaviour (lab setting): direct observation of children participating in a variety of structured activities in a university laboratory (e.g. running on a treadmill) will be performed over a 2-hour period within two weeks of a participant's 3-day free-living study period. Physical activity and sedentary behaviour (free-living): criterion measures of free-living activity will be obtained over 3 days through the use of wearable Go Pro video cameras (worn viewing outwards on the chest). Participants will wear the cameras for up to 8 hours during waking hours only, and will have the opportunity to remove them whenever they wish, and in other specific circumstances. Video will provide an objective measure of real-world activities that occur throughout the day (e.g. running around a playground with other kids), allowing for direct comparison with accelerometer data. We will use pattern recognition techniques to combine all this relevant data, so as to develop algorithms for assessing 24-hour movement patterns in the ‘real world’.
Sponsors
Rachael Taylor
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
8 Years to 16 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Key inclusion criteria: • Those between the ages of 8 and 16 years (inclusive); • Those who reside in the greater Dunedin area (the NZ city where the study is taking place); • Those with 'normal' sleep patterns* *Children and teens with a wide range of ‘normal’ sleep patterns will be recruited, as distinguished from abnormal sleep via the use of a validated questionnaire.
Exclusion criteria
Key exclusion criteria: • Sleep disorder (as identified by the SDSC*); • Chronic medical condition or physical disability that impedes participation in physical activity, or that may otherwise interfere with data collection. *The Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children, or SDSC (which has been validated in this age group).
Outcome results
None listed