Influence of Parents' Physical Activity on Children's Physical Activity and Cardiopulmonary Endurance

It is reported that parents have important influences on the children’ physical activity(PA) and health fitness, but such research has hardly been found in China nowdays. PURPOSE: To investigate PA level, health fitness and economic status among the children of 7-9 yrs and their parents; to assess the influence of parents’ PA level, economic, educational condition and so on. METHODS: The subjects were selected from Huilongguan Centre Primary School in Beijing.The children are 7-9 yrs and their parent who brought up them with age of 30-39 yrs.Through self-designed questionnaire, the study made investigation of economics and educational status on the subject families,and the other main contents including medical history, family history, PA and sports.It was obtained the PA data of the children by the revised PAQ-A,and the parents’PA level were measured by accelerometer (ActiGraph GT3X+).Health fitness examination adopted the national standard for pupil’s fitness measurements. RESULTS: 36 families completed the examination totally. According to daily average time of MVPA, whether one person or two of the couple, less than 30 mins was regarded as PA insufficient family(iPAf), and more than 30 mins was PA sufficient family(sPAf). (1)The data proved 20 sPAf and 16 iPAf in the study. (2)There were different in the children’s scores between sPAf(3.02±0.53)and insufficient ones(2.61±0.58)(P<0.05),and the BMI of the two groups (15.63±1.95 vs17.77±3.67) showed great difference(P<0.01). (3)The time of 50m*4 shuttle-run between the two children groups were different (119.35±29.42 vs 127.56±21.14s,P<0.05); (4)The sedentary time everyday of the husband and wife in a family were moderately correlated(r=0.516,P=0.023),and the light PA time displayed low positive correlation(r=0.362,P=0.046),while the correlation was not found between the time of their moderate and more intensity PA(r=0.145,P=0.093). CONCLUSIONS: (1)The findings indicated that the higher PA level the parent had, the higher PA level their children did;and the children’s cardiopulmonary endurance are higher similarly, whereas with the lower obesity extent. (2)The PA level of the husband and wife were interdependent and interactive. Supported by Central Universities and Colleges Basic Scientific Research Funds Special Funding (2016ZX016).