Lambe, Barry and Murphy, Niamh and Bauman, Adrian (2017) Active travel to primary schools in Ireland : An opportunistic evaluation of a natural experiment. Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 14 (6). pp. 448-454. ISSN 1543-3080
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Background: There is a paucity of intervention studies assessing active travel to school as a mechanism to increase physical activity. This paper describes the impact of a community-wide intervention on active travel to primary schools in 2 Irish towns. Methods: This was a repeat cross-sectional study of a natural experiment. Self-report questionnaires were completed by 5th and 6th grade students in 3 towns (n = 1038 students in 2 intervention towns; n = 419 students in 1 control town) at baseline and by a new group of students 2 years later at follow-up. The absolute change in the proportion of children walking and cycling to school (difference in differences) was calculated. Results: There was no overall intervention effect detected for active travel to or from school. This is despite an absolute increase of 14.7% (1.6, 27.9) in the proportion of children that indicated a preference for active travel to school in the town with the most intensive intervention (town 2). Conclusions: Interventions designed to increase active travel to school hold some promise but should have a high-intensity mix of infrastructural and behavioral measures, be gender-specific, address car dependency and focus on travel home from school initially.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Publisher Copyright: © 2017 Human Kinetics, Inc. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | /dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700/2732 |
| Departments or Groups: | |
| Depositing User: | Admin SSL |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Oct 2022 23:03 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Aug 2023 19:15 |
| URI: | http://repository-testing.wit.ie/id/eprint/3829 |
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