Pedometer In Children Essay

Literature Review: The role of a pedometer in promoting physical activity in children.

“Physical activity is defined as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that re-quires energy expenditure” (WHO, 2015). In modern childhood obesity has become a distress-ing national health concern. One in five children in Ireland is considered to be obese with lev-els of obesity acknowledged proportions in recent years (INMO, 2012). In many countries throughout the world the concern in children is increasing rapidly. Focusing on children’s food intake and physical activity is a major research priority in preventing its development from an early age. The use of pedometer is to count and monitor the number of steps taken throughout a period of time,

The study was mon-itored over 4 constructive days (2 weekend days and 2 weekdays) which was carried out over winter, spring and summer terms. The repeated measures analysis of variance was used to exam potential time (weekends versus weekday), gender and age difference in steps/day. The results presented that physical activity was high during weekdays compared to weekends, even though the majority of children do not meet the cut-off point for health. Those failing to meet the cut-off points were higher in the overweight and obese children (Duncan et al, 2007). With only 28.7% of males and 36.7% of females met or exceeded the BMI referenced cut-offs for health. With males attained significant higher mean steps per day than

Another major critique to the study may include bias, as both age and school factors have been known to influence childhood physical activity levels leading a threat to the results. An overall weakness and limitation for all the studies are that pedometers cannot directly cap-ture the intensity of physical activity, water sports and if they are not secured on properly the reading will not be accurate. Therefore no firm conclusions can be made as to whether children reached the recommended daily physical activity levels or