Impact of Virtual vs. In-Person School on Children Meeting the 24-h Movement Guidelines during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The pandemic mitigation strategy of closing schools, while necessary, may have unintentionally impacted children's moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), sleep, and time spent watching screens. In some locations, schools used hybrid attendance models, with some days during the week requiring in-person and others virtual attendance. This scenario offers an opportunity to evaluate the impact of attending in-person school on meeting the 24-h movement guidelines. Children (N = 690, 50% girls, K-5th) wore wrist-placed accelerometers for 14 days during October/November 2020. Parents completed daily reports on child time spent on screens and time spent on screens for school. The schools' schedule was learning for 2 days/week in-person and 3 days/week virtually. Using only weekdays (M-F), the 24-h movement behaviors were classified, and the probability of meeting all three was compared between in-person vs. virtual learning and across grades. Data for 4956 weekdays (avg. 7 d/child) were collected. In-person school was associated with a greater proportion (OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.33-2.18) of days that children were meeting the 24-h movement guidelines compared to virtual school across all grades. Students were more likely to meet the screen time (OR = 9.14, 95% CI: 7.05-11.83) and MVPA (OR = 1.50, 95% CI: 1.25-1.80) guidelines and less likely to meet the sleep (OR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.62-0.86) guidelines on the in-person compared to the virtual school days. Structured environments, such as school, have a protective effect on children's movement behaviors, especially physical activity and screen time.

Testing the Youth Physical Activity Promotion Model during the COVID-19 Pandemic, with Partial Least Squares Second-Order Latent Constructs.

We tested the Youth Physical Activity Promotion (YPAP) framework on Romanian students in order to identify actionable determinants to support participation in physical activity. Our sample consisted of 665 responses to an online survey, with participants aged 18-23 (mean = 19 years); 70% were women. We used the partial least squares algorithm to estimate the relationships between students' behavior and possible predictors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results indicate that all the theoretical dimensions of YPAP (predisposing, enabling and reinforcing) have a positive and significant impact on physical activity, with two mediating mechanisms expressed as predisposing factors: able and worth. Unlike previous research, we used second-order latent constructs, unveiling a particular structure for the enabling dimension that only includes sport competence, fitness and skills, but not the environmental factors.