Lower neighbourhood walkability and longer distance to school are related to physical activity in Belgian adolescents
Introduction
Adolescence is a period of steep decline in physical activity (PA) levels with considerable proportions of American and European adolescents not meeting the PA guideline of 60 min moderate to vigorous PA daily (Pate et al., 2002). Ecological models state that multiple interventions are needed to increase PA, with attention to demographic, psychosocial and physical environmental factors (Sallis and Owen, 2002). In adults, associations between the physical environment and PA have been well established (Sallis and Owen, 2002), but in adolescents, only a few studies have investigated these associations and results are ambiguous (Panter et al., 2008). Distance to school appears to be a consistent predictor of adolescents' travel behaviour, with those who have shorter journey distances being more likely to walk or cycle to school (Nelson et al., 2008). However, mixed results were found concerning the relation between walkability parameters and adolescents' PA behaviour (Panter et al., 2008). A possible explanation for these mixed findings, is that not only the neighbourhood, but also the home and school environment are important in explaining adolescents' PA behaviour (Van Sluijs et al., 2007).
Because of the indistinctness in the current literature on adolescents and the clear link between walkability and PA in adults in the United States (Sallis and Owen, 2002), Australia (Owen et al., 2007) and Europe (De Bourdeaudhuij et al., 2003, Van Dyck et al., 2009), the main aim of the present study was to investigate whether this association also exists in adolescents. Therefore, we hypothesized that adolescents living in a high-walkable town centre are more physically active than adolescents living in a less-walkable suburb.
Section snippets
Participants and procedures
The study was conducted in Izegem (26,544 inhabitants), a town in West-Flanders, Belgium. Data collection took place between February and April 2007. Two neighbourhoods were selected, based on objective geographical map data of connectivity and residential density. These two parameters are frequently used to measure neighbourhood walkability (Leslie et al., 2007). Key elements of ‘walkability’ are residential density, connectivity and land use mix. One high-walkable neighbourhood with high
Differences in neighbourhood perceptions, PA and travel time to school between the neighbourhoods (Table 1)
Results of the NEWS showed that urban adolescents perceived higher connectivity (p = .007), better land use mix (p < .001) and higher residential density (p < .001) than suburban adolescents, so the town centre was perceived as a more walkable area than the suburb was. These findings support the objective measurement of neighbourhood walkability, for which geographical map data of residential density and connectivity were used.
In contrast with the expectations, adolescents living in the less-walkable
Discussion and conclusions
The main finding of this study was that living in a less-walkable neighbourhood was associated with more PA (more cycling for transport and a trend towards more steps/day). This result is opposite to the results found for adults in international and Belgian studies (Sallis and Owen, 2002, De Bourdeaudhuij et al., 2003, Van Dyck et al., 2009), showing consistently that adults living in a high-walkable neighbourhood are more physically active.
The difference in cycling for transport can possibly
Conflict of interest statement
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO) B/09731/01. The authors acknowledge Lic. I. Quaegebeur for data collection.
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