Children's active school transportation: an international scoping review of psychosocial factors.

BACKGROUND: Over the last decades, the prevalence of AST has decreased significantly. Barriers to active school transport (AST) have been extensively examined in the literature, while psychosocial factors that facilitate AST have received less attention. To our best knowledge, there are currently no reviews on this subject. Therefore, the objective of this review was to scope the literature and identify published research about psychosocial factors related to AST. METHODS: Systematic searches conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, TRID, Scopus, and ERIC resulted in a total of 1933 publications, and 77 of them were considered eligible for this review. RESULTS: The results of the included articles were categorised into four psychosocial factors: confidence in ability, attitudes, social support, and social norms, which were all generally positively related to AST, with a few exceptions. CONCLUSION: The findings of this review indicate that these psychosocial factors may be important to consider when developing interventions and highlight that both children and parents should be involved in the process. This knowledge can serve as a valuable guide for developing interventions to promote AST. However, the evidence base supporting these psychosocial factors requires further investigation to fully understand how and when to incorporate them to maximise AST efficacy.

Long-Term Perspectives of a School-Based Intervention to Promote Active School Transportation.

There is a global need for sustainable interventions that increase physical activity among children, and active school transportation (AST) can promote physical activity among schoolchildren. Therefore, an intervention based on gamification, empowerment, and social cognitive theory was initiated in 2016 to promote AST. The aim of this study was to follow up on participants' experiences one and two years after the AST intervention was initiated. Data were collected through focus groups and individual interviews which were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Thirty-one pupils (2017), and forty pupils (2018) aged 9-10 years, two teachers (2017, 2018) and one principal (2018) participated in the study. The result is presented as one main theme; "Unity for an active community-An intervention towards making the active choice the easy choice" and three sub-themes; "Well begun is half done-Engagement sparks motivation", "It takes two to tango-Keep moving with gamifications and togetherness" and "Jumping on the bandwagon-From project to everyday use." The results show that the concept of the intervention was attractive to re-use and that it created a habit to use AST among the children. Interventions to promote AST can benefit from the use of engagement, togetherness, and gamification.