KEY POINTS:
Family car ownership and proximity to schools are major factors influencing whether children walk to school, research shows.
An Otago University study published in today's New Zealand Medical Journal has found that of 1500 Dunedin primary school children only about one-third walked to their school on the day the survey was done.
A matching survey of their parents indicated that about half of the children usually walked to school fewer than three times a week.
Study co-author Tony Reeder, director of the university's Cancer Society social and behavioural research unit, said the findings provided objective evidence previously unavailable to people working in the health, education and transport planning sectors.
"While a decline in the number of children walking to school has been clear, this is the first local study to nail down actual numbers and examine the factors involved," Dr Reeder said.
A number of factors were associated with children being more likely to walk to school, including distance from home, family car ownership, ethnicity, gender, age and whether their parents had walked to school.
The distance a child lived from school was the strongest predictor, he said.
The number of children walking declined sharply as the distance they lived from school increased.
"Those living within 1km of their school were almost 30 times more likely to walk than children living more than 3km from school.
"The closure of neighbourhood schools is likely to have contributed to a reduction in the number of children who walked to school," Dr Reeder said.
Family car ownership was strongly associated with walking.
Children from families without household access to a car were 10 times more likely to walk than those whose families had as many or more cars than adults living in their household.
Dr Reeder said this highlighted a negative aspect of car ownership.
Children at lower socioeconomic decile schools (deciles 2 to 4) were more than twice as likely to walk as those who attended higher decile schools.
Pacific Island and Maori children were, respectively, more than 2.5 times and 50 per cent more likely to walk to school than European children.
"From a health promotion perspective, these findings could be seen as having some positive implications that run counter to the negative health statistics often reported for these groups," he said.
Boys were about one-third more likely to walk than girls and children in Years 4 to 6 were 72 per cent more likely to walk than younger children.
"These findings are likely to be related to more protective adult attitudes towards girls and younger children than towards boys and older children," Dr Reeder said.
Children whose parents had walked to school as a child were 35 per cent more likely to walk to school, too.
"This finding indicated that engagement in behaviours, such as walking, can be passed on from generation to generation."
Low levels of walking today suggested there would be even less transmission to the next generation, unless efforts were made to encourage and support walking as a healthy way to getting around.
"As more than one-third of children in New Zealand fail to achieve the recommended level of physical activity, it is important that we find ways to encourage and enable children to take up this regular and convenient form of activity," Dr Reeder said.
- NZPA
