1.Parental perception and guideline awareness of children's lifestyle behaviours at ages 5 to 14 in Singapore.
Phaik Ling QUAH ; Benny Kai Guo LOO ; Nurul Syaza RAZALI ; Nurul Sakinah RAZALI ; Chin Chye TEO ; Kok Hian TAN
Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore 2021;50(9):695-702
INTRODUCTION:
There are limited data on the descriptive lifestyle behaviour of school-age children in Singapore.
METHODS:
A total of 100 parents of children ages 5 to 14 participated in a parents' proxy-reported survey. Frequency of moderate physical activity (PA) and vigorous PA was assessed, while t-tests or chi-square test was used to examine differences between weekdays and weekends for sleep, screen viewing time (SVT) and sedentary behaviour (SB).
RESULTS:
Of the 100 children (68% of Chinese ethnicity, 59% boys, mean age 9.1±2.9 years), 31% were overweight or obese, with body mass index z-score of >1. For moderate and vigorous PA participation in a typical week, 32.0% and 43.0%, respectively, did not participate, while median (interquartile range) days of participation were 3 (2-3) days/week and 2 (1-3) days/week for a duration of 60 (interquartile range 30-120) minutes/session. When comparing weekends with weekdays, the means (standard deviation) of both SVT and sleep duration were higher on weekends (SVT: 4.1 [2.9] versus 3.3 [3.1] hours/day,
CONCLUSION
Lifestyle behaviours were suboptimal in Singapore children compared with existing overseas guidelines, indicating a need for an integrated guideline with greater dissemination.
Adolescent
;
Child
;
Child, Preschool
;
Exercise
;
Female
;
Humans
;
Male
;
Parents
;
Perception
;
Sedentary Behavior
;
Singapore