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COMPARISON OF EXERCISE PARTICIPATION RATES FOR CHILDREN IN THE LITERATURE WITH THOSE IN EPA'S CONSOLIDATED HUMAN ACTIVITY DATABASE (CHAD)
Citation:
McCurdy, T R. AND J M. Burke. COMPARISON OF EXERCISE PARTICIPATION RATES FOR CHILDREN IN THE LITERATURE WITH THOSE IN EPA'S CONSOLIDATED HUMAN ACTIVITY DATABASE (CHAD). Presented at ISEA Conference, Monterey Peninsula, CA, October 24-27, 2000.
Description:
CHAD contains over 22,000 person-days of human activity pattern survey data. Part of the database includes exercise participation rates for children 0-17 years old, as well as for adults. Analyses of this database indicates that approximately 34% of the 0-17 age group (hereafter called "children") participates in "sports and exercise," and that the average number of minutes per day for "doers" is about 124 (2h). These results are approximate due to the various definitions of exercise used by the different studies that comprise CHAD. This paper examines the comparability of these rates with values reported in the wider exercise physiology and nutritional literature.
The categories normally used in that literature are "moderate," "moderate-to-vigorous," and "vigorous" physical activities (abbreviated MPA, MVPA, and VPA, respectively). For this comparison, we focus on the MVPA category. Since various authors use different levels of energy expenditure for MVPA, our comparison first had to develop a "consensus" definition of the level of energy used in MVPA, and then use it to develop exercise participation rates for children. Both nationally-applicable and site-specific exercise participation studies are used and compared.
The comparison indicates that children's exercise participation rate (% doers) and time spent in exercise by doers data in CHAD approximates that found in the national exercise surveys, and in many of the site-specific surveys of "normal" children. This finding does not hold for obese children, who exercise less often and less intensely than normals. Thus, users of CHAD can have a reasonable level of confidence regarding children's exercise participation rate information found in the database, at least for non-obese children, which is comforting given the importance of this activity in many exposure assessments of national ambient air quality standards--particularly ozone and sulfur dioxide.
This work has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. It has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication.