Researchers studying how children’s daily activities are associated with their health have developed a web application that shows users how reallocating time in their day from one activity to another could affect their health and performance academic The new app and the data used to develop it are described in a paper published this week in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Dorothea Dumuid of the University of South Australia and colleagues.
How we use our time can affect our health, well-being, and productivity, but the relationships between time use and outcomes can be difficult to interpret for both health professionals and the general public.
In the new study, researchers used data on 1,685 children aged eleven to twelve enrolled in the Australian Child Health CheckPoint study. Time spent on daily activities was derived from a self-reported 24-hour memory tool in which children recalled the activities they did the previous day with 5-min granularity. Data on body fat percentage, psychosocial health, and academic performance were also available for each participant. They found that, after adjustments for age, socioeconomics and puberty status, how people used their time was significantly associated with body fat percentage (F=2.66, p<0.001), psychosocial health (F=4.02, p<0.001) and academic performance. (F=2.76, p<0.001).
To convey the strength of these associations in an easy-to-understand and interactive way, the authors developed a web application, called Healthy-Day-App, in which users enter their initial time allocations and then see how would be the changes in their use of time. associated with the results. For example, reallocating 60 minutes of screen time to physical activity is associated, on average, with 4.2% less body fat (-0.8). [95% CI -1.0 to -0.5] percentage units), a 2.5% improvement in psychosocial health (+1.9 [1.4 to 2.5] PedsQL psychosocial health score) and a 0.9% higher academic performance (+4.5 [1.8 to 7.2] NAPLAN writing score). However, the benefits may be reduced if time for physical activity is reallocated from other activities.
The authors say that the Healthy-Day app is the first to allow personalized estimation of the impact of time allocation and may enable better engagement and understanding of the data not only by researchers, but also by public health promoters, doctors, fitness. professionals, policy makers and members of the general public.
The authors add, “Sleep, exercise, screen time, homeworkâthere are many competing demands on our children’s time because there are only 24 hours in a day. We present a time reallocation tool online that allows us to compare how different exchanges of time use- Leave is estimated to influence children’s health and well-being.”
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Journal reference:
Dumuid, D., et al. (2022) Your best day: an interactive application for translating how time reallocations in a 24-hour day are associated with health measures. PLOS ONE. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272343.