An Empirical Investigation of Characteristics of Children's Physical Activity Recall

The purpose of this study was to investigate several critical cognitive related factors that may influence the children's physical activity recall based on a cognitive process model. Sixty children from middle schools, ages 12 to 15 years old, were recruited from Korea and asked to recall their physical activities of previous days. Direct observation method, a criterion measure, was used to validate children's physical activity recall. Using a compendium of physical activity (Ainsworth et al., 2000), energy expenditures were calculated for both children's recall and observed records. To answer the research hypotheses, a 2 x 2 x 2 repeated measure ANOVA was performed. Between-subject factors were recall time periods, and question formats, and a within-subject factor was type of days on the two physical activity measures. The dependent variable was the accuracy of children's physical activity recall, square difference between the energy expenditures from children's recall and observed records. The relationships between the two measures were correlated using the Pearson correlation. In addition, Root Mean Square Difference (RMSD) and Mean Signed Difference (MSD) indexes and the Bland and Altman plots were calculated for determining the effectiveness of physical activity recall. The results showed that accuracy of children's physical activity recall was affected by two cognitive related factors, recall time periods and question formats. Considering the mean square difference scores, after 1-day recall was more accurate than after 3-day recall, and the recall using diary with retrieval cues had a higher accuracy than the recall using diary without retrieval cues. Additional findings support the results based on the conventional inferential statistics. Children's recall and observed records were highly correlated each other among the whole group and the subgroups. The smaller RMSD, a greater accuracy, was found in the after 1day group of the recall time periods factor, and in diary with retrieval cues group of the question formats factor. The Bland and Altman plot also showed that the difference scores were distributed nearly close-to-zero, suggesting little systematic bias in children's recall. Overall, children tended to slightly overestimate their physical activity participation.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Kinesiology and Community Health

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Kang, Minsoo

Contributors dc:contributor

• Zhu, Weimo

• Psychology, Cognitive

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3153341

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86370