The measurement, levels, patterns, and compositional adiposity and psychological associations of primary school children?s physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep, living in an ethnic diverse city.

Movement behaviours such as physical activity, sedentary behaviours and sleep are vital and important determinants for health. Many people are not active enough, sit too much and do not sleep enough for good health. These health behaviours are shown to develop and form during early childhood. Early childhood is also where gender and ethnic movement inequalities also begin, with females, and ethnic minorities more likely to be less active, sit more and sleep less than males and majority ethnic groups. However, across the research literature there is a dearth of data which can explore the levels, patterns, measurement with consideration of ethnicity. This body of work seeks to add to the literature.

Since 2016 Born in Bradford have invested heavily in the measurement of children and young people’s movement behaviours, such as physical activity and sedentary behaviour. This shown through collecting accelerometer data from 1500 young people and questionnaire data from over 400 young people the Growing-up follow of the BiB cohort. The Join Us: Move Play project also has collected accelerometer data and questionnaire data from 2500 young people across its pioneer phase and baseline of the control trial.

The questionnaire data collected from both Growing-Up and JUMP has come from previously validated questionnaires (Physical activity questionnaire for older children [PAQ-C], and Youth Activity Profile [YAP]) However, both questionnaires have been amended due to pragmatic reasons, with JUMP also asking parents/careers to proxy estimate their child’s behaviours. Deriving validity statistics compared to paired accelerometer data will allow researchers to understand the accuracy of such questionnaires and also guide future work in the calibration or changing of such questionnaire tools and will also guide researchers using BiB data in how best to use the questionnaire items, whether as individual items in multivariate analysis or as outcome measures.

The research literature has moved away from focusing on physical activity, sleep and sedentary behaviours as separate behaviours. Each of the behaviours are hypothesised to impact on another, and this impact of change could be a significant determinant for health and development of young people.

Much of the levels and patterns of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep work in the academic literature is limited by a lack of representation of ethnic minority groups. Born in Bradford’s accelerometer data is a great resource to explore ethnicity differences with great confidence due to the nature of the data set.