Measuring Children's Activity in its Social Context(RMI)

描述(由申请人提供)： 儿童肥胖症已经成为一个主要的公共卫生问题。理解儿童肥胖的主要差距之一是缺乏对儿童在其社会背景下的体育活动强度的准确评估。尽管针对成人开展了广泛的工作，但针对儿童开展的工作却很少。在大规模调查中，社会科学家和行为科学家收集有关儿童在社会上有意义的类别参与的信息。但这些措施并没有考虑到所涉及的体力活动强度。运动生理学家和肥胖研究人员已经开发出关于儿童体育活动的类型、持续时间和强度的自我报告测量方法；然而，他们并不收集有关社会背景的信息。这一拟议项目的具体目的是召集一个科学家网络，从社会和行为科学、运动生理学、公共卫生和营养等多个角度进行研究，以研究儿童的活动。该网络将侧重于通常不受研究的儿童，即3-5岁的儿童以及6-12岁的儿童，并将考虑不同族裔背景的儿童。这些目标涉及研究设计、测量、数据收集技术和分析方法的四个领域。我们的具体目标是：1)评估关于体力活动和相关的具有社会意义的活动类别的测量和数据收集的现状，2)评估如何将社会和行为科学方法与生理方法联系起来，以确定活动水平和能量消耗，以及3)进行试点测试，以探索如何纳入这些技术，并确定所推荐的方法/设备用于大规模研究的成本和有效性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Childhood obesity has become a major public health concern. One of the key gaps in understanding childhood obesity is the lack of an accurate assessment of the intensity of children's physical activities in their social context. Although extensive work along these lines has been conducted for adults, little has been conducted for children. In large-scale surveys, social and behavioral scientists collect information on children's participation in socially meaningful categories. But these measures do not capture the intensity of physical activity involved. Exercise physiologists and obesity researchers have developed self-report measures of the type, duration, and intensity of children's physical activity; however, they do not collect information on the social context. The specific aim of this proposed project is to convene a network of scientists conducting research from multiple perspectives, that of social and behavioral science, exercise physiology, and public health and nutrition, to study children's activities. This network would focus upon children of ages not typically studied, those 3-5, as well as those 6-12, and would consider children of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The objectives address the four areas of research design, measurement, data collection techniques, and analytic methods. Our specific aims are: 1) To evaluate the current state of measurement and data collection on physical activity and associated societally meaningful categories of activity, 2) To evaluate how to link the social and behavioral scientific approaches to physical activity and the physiological approaches to determining activity levels and energy expenditures, and 3) To conduct pilot testing to explore how to incorporate such techniques and to determine the cost and effectiveness of recommended methods/equipment for large-scale studies.