During
the past decade, a number or researchers have focused on the
interdisciplinary topic of active transport to school (ATS) and
children’s health and wellbeing including their body weight and Body
Mass Index (BMI). Most of the recent studies are focused on a handful of
high-income societies, leaving other countries less researched. Thus,
this study targeted both high-income and less-studied contexts within
the European context. The aim was to provide reliable inter-contextual
data for facilitating comparative studies as well as undertaking
preliminary analyses on the contextual differences in children’s walking
to school, relationships between parent’s commuting mode choice and
that of their children, the associations of built environment with ATS
and BMI, and finally noteworthy points for interventions for promoting
children’s school-based physical activity.
Using the results of surveys undertaken in nine European cities in 2016,
statistical analyses were conducted, which led to preliminary results
confirming strong significant associations of the built environment with
children’s ATS as well as strong and significant associations of
parents’ commute mode choice with that of their children. These
preliminary results do not confirm significant differences between
walking to school in different European contexts. It is probable that
these differences exist regarding biking to school, but this may be
tested in future research. This study underlines the circumstances of
planning a more active school commuting behavior in the future of
European societies: activation of 9-12-year-old European children’s
school commuting is recommended to be done by changing the parent’s
commute mode choices as well as integrating urban planning,
transportation planning, and school site selection in future urban
plans. Awareness of policy makers, families, and also children may be
essential in planning more active school commuting.
Applying the results of the surveys done during this project, future
research will target inter-contextual differences between factors such
as physical activity, ATS, and BMI, correlations between the perceptions
of children and parents regarding school commuting and neighborhood and
the associations with physical activity and BMI, the possible
importance of city size in determining all the above factors regardless
of the national context, and the differences between the tendencies and
phenomena influencing school commuting-related physical activity and BMI
in emerging European countries compared to high-income countries.
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