Friendship Network Characteristics Are Associated with Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in Early Adolescence

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Abstract

Introduction

There is limited understanding of the association between peer social networks and physical activity (PA), sedentary and screen-related behaviors. This study reports on associations between personal network characteristics and these important health behaviors for early adolescents.

Methods

Participants were 310 students, aged 11–13 years, from fifteen randomly selected Victorian primary schools (43% response rate). PA and sedentary behaviors were collected via accelerometer and self-report questionnaire, and anthropometric measures via trained researchers. Participants nominated up to fifteen friends, and described the frequency of interaction and perceived activity intensity of these friends. Personal network predictors were examined using regression modelling for PA and sedentary/screen behavior.

Results

Perceived activity levels of friends, and friendships with very frequent interaction were associated with outside-of-school PA and/or sedentary/screen time. Differences according to sex were also observed in the association between network characteristics and PA and sedentary time. A higher number of friends and greater proportion of same sex friends were associated with boys engaging in more moderate-to-vigorous PA outside of school hours. PA intensity during school-day breaks was positively associated with having a greater proportion of friends who played sports for girls, and a greater proportion of male friends for boys.

Conclusion

Friendship network characteristics are associated with PA and sedentary/screen time in late childhood/early adolescence, and these associations differ by sex. The positive influence of very active peers may be a promising avenue to strengthen traditional interventions for the promotion of PA and reduction in screen time.

Related collections

Most cited references 21

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Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity from ages 9 to 15 years.

Philip R. Nader, Robert Bradley, Renate Houts … (2008)

Decreased physical activity plays a critical role in the increase in childhood obesity. Although at least 60 minutes per day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) is recommended, few longitudinal studies have determined the recent patterns of physical activity of youth. To determine the patterns and determinants of MVPA of youth followed from ages 9 to 15 years. Longitudinal descriptive analyses of the 1032 participants in the 1991-2007 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development birth cohort from 10 study sites who had accelerometer-determined minutes of MVPA at ages 9 (year 2000), 11 (2002), 12 (2003), and 15 (2006) years. Participants included boys (517 [50.1%]) and girls (515 [49.9%]); 76.6% white (n = 791); and 24.5% (n = 231) lived in low-income families. Mean MVPA minutes per day, determined by 4 to 7 days of monitored activity. At age 9 years, children engaged in MVPA approximately 3 hours per day on both weekends and weekdays. Weekday MVPA decreased by 37 minutes per year [corrected], while weekend MVPA decreased by 39 minutes per year [corrected]. By age 15 years, adolescents were only engaging in MVPA for 50 minutes per weekday [corrected] and 36 minutes per weekend day [corrected]. Boys were more active than girls, spending 18 and 14 more minutes per day [corrected] in MVPA on the weekdays and weekends, respectively. The rate of decrease in MVPA was the same for boys and girls. The estimated age at which girls crossed below the recommended 60 minutes of MVPA per day was approximately 13.2 years for weekday [corrected] activity compared with boys at 14.9 years [corrected], and for weekend activity, girls crossed below the recommended 60 minutes of MVPA at 12.7 years [corrected] compared with boys at 13.6 years [corrected]. In this study cohort, measured physical activity decreased significantly between ages 9 and 15 years.

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Louise C Mâsse, Bernard Fuemmeler, Cheryl B Anderson … (2005)

Accelerometers are recognized as a valid and objective tool to assess free-living physical activity. Despite the widespread use of accelerometers, there is no standardized way to process and summarize data from them, which limits our ability to compare results across studies. This paper a) reviews decision rules researchers have used in the past, b) compares the impact of using different decision rules on a common data set, and c) identifies issues to consider for accelerometer data reduction. The methods sections of studies published in 2003 and 2004 were reviewed to determine what decision rules previous researchers have used to identify wearing period, minimal wear requirement for a valid day, spurious data, number of days used to calculate the outcome variables, and extract bouts of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA). For this study, four data reduction algorithms that employ different decision rules were used to analyze the same data set. The review showed that among studies that reported their decision rules, much variability was observed. Overall, the analyses suggested that using different algorithms impacted several important outcome variables. The most stringent algorithm yielded significantly lower wearing time, the lowest activity counts per minute and counts per day, and fewer minutes of MVPA per day. An exploratory sensitivity analysis revealed that the most stringent inclusion criterion had an impact on sample size and wearing time, which in turn affected many outcome variables. These findings suggest that the decision rules employed to process accelerometer data have a significant impact on important outcome variables. Until guidelines are developed, it will remain difficult to compare findings across studies.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Rodrigo Huerta-Quintanilla: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date (Electronic): 28 December 2015

Publication date Collection: 2015

Volume: 10

Issue: 12

Electronic Location Identifier: e0145344

Affiliations

[1 ]WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

[2 ]School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia

[3 ]Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Cinvestav-Merida, MEXICO

Author notes

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceived and designed the experiments: JM SA LMB KDLH. Performed the experiments: JM. Analyzed the data: JM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JM SA LMB KDLH. Wrote the paper: JM SA LMB KDLH.

* E-mail: jennifer.marks@ 123456deakin.edu.au

Article

Publisher ID: PONE-D-15-36667

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145344

PMC ID: 4692398

PubMed ID: 26709924

SO-VID: a168c3d1-d11d-45ed-8b6f-bc560b8819ab

License:

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

History

Date received : 20 August 2015

Date accepted : 2 December 2015

Page count

Figures: 0, Tables: 4, Pages: 15

Funding

LMB is supported by an Alfred Deakin postdoctoral fellowship. SA is supported by funding from an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council/ Australian National Heart Foundation Career Development Fellowship (APP1045836). SA is a researcher on the US National Institutes of Health grant titled Systems Science to Guide Whole-of-Community Childhood Obesity Interventions (1R01HL115485-01A1). SA is a researcher within a NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Obesity Policy and Food Systems (APP1041020).

Custom metadata

Data Availability All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.