Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
My interest in this area started from a project we were carrying out for the U.K. Department for Transport. We were looking at ways to reduce the number of short trips by car. One of the things that came out of that was the very large number of trips made on behalf of children, taking them to and from school and to multiple activities. We then undertook a project to look at ways of reducing the effects of car use on children's volume of physical activity, among other things.
One of the things we did in that study was to fit 200 children aged 10 to 13 with activity monitors, small things the size of pagers, which they wore around their waists. We also asked them to keep diaries of all their activities and travel over a period of four days. From that we found a number of conclusions. We found, for example, that walking and playing provided more exercise than most other activities they undertook. We found that some children spent more calories walking to and from school for a week than they did in two hours of physical education and games lessons. That got into the national newspapers here in the U.K.
Free play tends to use more calories than equivalent organized activities. For example, a child kicking a football around will consume more calories than he or she would in a normal organized activity over the same length of time.
Children tend to walk when they go out to play, but when they are taken to organized activities, they tend to be taken by car, so not only do they use more calories when they go out to play, but they also use more getting there than in an organized activity. Of course, the trend nowadays is toward these organized activities, rather than letting children just go out and play.
We also found that children who walk more than they use the car tend to be more active in other aspects of their lives, whereas children who use the car more tend to be less active in other activities.
Among other things, we did find that many of the trips taking children to school were often part of a longer trip, usually by a parent--often, but not always, the mother--so that even if the children did stop travelling by car, there would not be an equivalent reduction in the number of cars on the road.
In that project we also looked at interventions such as walking buses. That's a group of children being escorted to school. These are quite common in many countries around the world nowadays. We did find they could encourage children to walk, but they require a lot of effort to organize, particularly in order to maintain their existence. We found that about half the trips made by walking buses in the area we were looking at were previously made by car; there was quite a large transfer from car to walking by the children taking part, but as I said earlier, there wasn't an equivalent reduction in the number of cars on the road.
We found the children who did switch from car to walking or to walking bus were spending about 22 minutes a day on the walking bus. In other words, that could be an extra 110 minutes a week in physical activity. We also found that children tend to drop out of walking buses when they get to the age of about eight because they simply lose interest in the whole concept; their mothers, who are usually the volunteers, drop out at the same time, which is why there is this problem of continuity.
More recently we carried out another project, which we called CAPABLE: children's' activities, perceptions, and behaviour in the local environment. We fitted the children with GPS--global positioning satellite--monitors, which are worn on the wrist. They walk around; these communicate with GPS satellites up in the sky, and we can tell with reasonable accuracy where the children are, so we can actually match up with the diaries telling us what the children are doing. The GPS monitor is telling us where they're going, and the activity monitor is telling us how active they are, so we have a very rich body of data on a number of children.
We also conducted surveys and questionnaires of both the children and their parents, with a particular interest in things like the effects of allowing children to go out without an adult.
The following factors seem to correlate with being allowed out alone: living with one parent; having an older sibling, particularly for girls; a household not owning a car; a house having a garden, which we assume associates with the type of area they're living in; and having access to a park or a communal area. So those factors seem to encourage children to be allowed out.
We found that children being allowed out alone were given a greater experience of a variety of places, more opportunity for exercise, and more opportunity to be with their friends and have their own social networks. But of course there are many complicating factors; for example, the nature of the area they live in, cultural factors, and so on. For example, we looked at some children in London, and they were allowed out, but not at such an early age as those living in more rural and suburban areas.
We also found that children tend to walk more vigorously when with adults than when unaccompanied by adults, which we believe reflects the tendency of children to explore more when they're on their own. They can often sit and chat with their friends when there's no adult present, whereas often, when a child has been walking with a parent, they are forced to walk rather fast, which might, at first sight, seem quite a good idea. Nonetheless, we would like to get children out playing, learning, exploring, and using the environment.
The GPS equipment has enabled us to improve the quantity of the results from the diaries. We're currently analyzing the findings from these in relation to the level of activity and the types of places they go to. That's very much ongoing research, and we're still analyzing those findings, but I can let you have those later, if you wish.
The third issue I'd like to go back to briefly is children's car dependency, because that's one thing we're very interested in. Our conclusion is that in order to reduce children's car dependency, you need to reduce their parent's car dependency, because children's car use tends to reflect that of their parents.
One of the major concerns for parents in this country is letting children out without an adult. There's a very high level of concern, often rather irrational, about letting children go out without an adult, so we need to overcome these parents' concerns about letting children out alone or with just their friends. We need to find ways of making the local environment more pleasant for children, and therefore for everybody. We need to get across to parents the message about the risk the lack of exercise is posing to their children's health in the long, medium, and even short term. And finally, we need to stress the message about the benefit of using everyday activity as a way of gaining exercise.
That's all I wish to say at the moment, but I'm very happy to answer your questions and provide more information in due course.
Thank you.
