scholarly journals Longitudinal associations between neighbourhood trust, social support and physical activity in adolescents: evidence from the Olympic Regeneration in East London (ORiEL) study

2020 ◽  
pp. jech-2019-213412
Author(s):  
Nicolas Berger ◽  
Daniel Lewis ◽  
Matteo Quartagno ◽  
Edmund Njeru Njagi ◽  
Steven Cummins

BackgroundMost UK adolescents do not achieve recommended levels of physical activity (PA). Previous studies suggest that the social environment could contribute to inequalities in PA behaviours, but longitudinal evidence is limited. We examined whether neighbourhood trust and social support were longitudinally associated with four common forms of PA: walking to school, walking for leisure, outdoor PA and pay and play PA. We further assessed whether gender moderated these associations.MethodsWe used longitudinal data from the Olympic Regeneration in East London (ORiEL) study. In 2012, 3106 adolescents aged 11–12 were enrolled from 25 schools in four deprived boroughs of East London, UK. Adolescents were followed-up in 2013 and 2014. The final sample includes 2664 participants interviewed at waves 2 and 3. We estimated logistic regression models using generalised estimating equations (GEEs) (pooled models) and proportional odds models (models of change) to assess associations between the social environment exposures and the PA outcomes, adjusting for potential confounders. Item non-response was handled using multilevel multiple imputation.ResultsWe found that different aspects of the social environment predict different types of PA. Neighbourhood trust was positively associated with leisure-type PA. Social support from friends and family was positively associated with walking for leisure. There was some evidence that changes in exposures led to changes in the PA outcomes. Associations did not systematically differ by gender.ConclusionThese results confirm the importance of the social environment to predict PA and its change over time in a deprived and ethnically diverse adolescent population.

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Edina Maria De Camargo ◽  
Michael Pereira da Silva ◽  
Jorge Mota ◽  
Wagner De Campos

OBJECTIVE: To verify the prevalence and factors associated with active transportation to school (ATS) among Brazilian adolescents attending public schools. METHODS: Crossectional study with a representative sample of 1,984 adolescents (55.9% girls). Sociodemographic variables included were: gender, age, parental schooling, and socioeconomic status. Psychosocial factors included were: social support from parents and friends for physical activity. Walking, cycling, or skateboarding to school were considered models of active transportation. Binary logistic regression models verified sociodemographic and psychosocial factors association with ATS, adopting p < 0.05. RESULTS: The prevalence of active transportation to school was 37.7% (16.2% boys and 21.5% girls). For boys, ATS was associated with: social support from parents in practicing physical activity together as a family (OR = 1.57; 95%CI 1.09–2.25), giving them rides (OR = 1.56; 95%CI 1.04–2.32), and remarking their good performance on it (OR = 1.73; CI95 1.08–2.76); as well as the social support from friends in practicing physical activity together (OR = 2.23; 95%CI 1.35–3.69). For girls, the likelihood of using ATS increased with age (OR = 1.43; 95%CI 1.06–1.92) and having friends who practice physical activity together with them (OR = 1.48, 95%CI 1.04–2.10). CONCLUSION: Age and social support for physical activity were associated with ATS. Parents who practice together, give rides, and remark on physical activities increase the likelihood of adolescent boys using ATS. Social support from friends to physical activity increased the likelihood of both genders using ATS.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Berger ◽  
Daniel Lewis ◽  
Matteo Quartagno ◽  
Edmund Njeru Njagi ◽  
Steven Cummins

Abstract Background Most UK adolescents do not achieve recommended levels of physical activity. Previous studies suggested that perceptions of the neighbourhood environment could contribute to explain differences in physical activity behaviours. We aimed to examine whether five measures of perceptions – perceived bus stop proximity, traffic safety, street connectivity, enjoyment of the neighbourhood for walking/cycling, and personal safety – were longitudinally associated with common forms of physical activity, namely walking to school, walking for leisure, and a composite measure of outdoor physical activity. We further aimed to investigate the moderating role of gender. Methods We used longitudinal data from the Olympic Regeneration in East London (ORiEL) study, a prospective cohort study. In 2012, 3106 adolescents aged 11 to 12 were recruited from 25 schools in 4 deprived boroughs of East London. Adolescents were followed-up in 2013 and 2014. The final sample includes 2260 adolescents surveyed at three occasions. We estimated logistic regression models using Generalised Estimating Equations to test the plausibility of hypotheses on the nature of the longitudinal associations (general association, cumulative effect, co-varying trajectories), adjusting for potential confounders. Item non-response was handled using multiple imputation. Results Longitudinal analyses indicate little evidence that perceptions of the neighbourhood are important predictors of younger adolescent physical activity. There was weak evidence that greater perceived proximity to bus stops is associated with a small decrease in the probability of walking for leisure. Results also indicate that poorer perception of personal safety decreases the probability of walking for leisure. There was some indication that better perception of street connectivity is associated with more outdoor physical activity. Finally, we found very little evidence that the associations between perceptions of the neighbourhood and physical activity differed by gender. Conclusions This study suggests that younger adolescents’ perceptions of their neighbourhood environment, and changes in these perceptions, did not consistently predict physical activity in a deprived and ethnically diverse urban population. Future studies should use situation-specific measures of the neighbourhood environment and physical activity to better capture the hypothesised processes and explore the relative roles of the objective environment, parental and adolescents’ perceptions in examining differences in types of physical activity.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
W akar Amin

History is witness to the fact that warring factions in any armed conflict often commit several human rights violations like murder, rape, torture etc., and the act of disappearance of person is one among them. While the persons who are subjected to disappearance are the primary victims, the families they leave behind are the secondary victims. The situation makes families of the disappeared person suffer great anguish when their loved ones go disappeared. The phenomenon produces anguish, fear and unspeakable sorrow for thousands of families. Appreciating the importance of social work professionals in helping families deal effective with their life situations the present paper aims to provide a case for social work interventional techniques of Social Support System (SSS) and Case Management to modify and make the social environment conducive for the families to live a normal life.


2000 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 1003-1010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith B. Williams

This study examined the perceptions of social support reported by 70 African-American, 44 Hispanic, 20 Native-American, and 69 Asian-American doctoral students ( N = 203) concerning their experiences in graduate school. The Doctoral Student Survey was used to measure the levels and types of social support provided. One-way analysis of variance of mean scores indicated that a majority of doctoral students perceived the academic environment on campus and faculty advisers to be strong sources of social support, while perceiving the social environment on campus as unsupportive of their progress. The African-American and Native-American doctoral students perceived the social environment on campus to be less supportive than did the Hispanic and Asian-American doctoral students, and Native-American doctoral students perceived their departments to be less supportive than did the African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American doctoral students.


JMIR Aging ◽  
10.2196/12496 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. e12496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zakkoyya H Lewis ◽  
Maria C Swartz ◽  
Eloisa Martinez ◽  
Elizabeth J Lyons

Background Physical activity (PA) is critical for maintaining independence and delaying mobility disability in aging adults. However, 27 to 44% of older adults in the United States are meeting the recommended PA level. Activity trackers are proving to be a promising tool to promote PA adherence through activity tracking and enhanced social interaction features. Although social support has been known to be an influential behavior change technique to promote PA, how middle-aged and older adults use the social interaction feature of mobile apps to provide virtual support to promote PA engagement remains mostly underexplored. Objective This study aimed to describe the social support patterns of middle-aged and older adults using a mobile app as part of a behavioral PA intervention. Methods Data from 35 participants (mean age 61.66 [SD 6] years) in a 12-week, home-based activity intervention were used for this secondary mixed method analysis. Participants were provided with a Jawbone Up24 activity monitor and an Apple iPad Mini installed with the UP app to facilitate self-monitoring and social interaction. All participants were given an anonymous account and encouraged to interact with other participants using the app. Social support features included comments and likes. Thematic coding was used to identify the type of social support provided within the UP app and characterize the levels of engagement from users. Participants were categorized as superusers or contributors, and passive participants were categorized as lurkers based on the literature. Results Over the 12-week intervention, participants provided a total of 3153 likes and 1759 comments. Most participants (n=25) were contributors, with 4 categorized as superusers and 6 categorized as lurkers. Comments were coded as emotional support, informational support, instrumental support, self-talk, and other, with emotional support being the most prevalent type. Conclusions Our cohort of middle-aged and older adults was willing to use the social network feature in an activity app to communicate with anonymous peers. Most of our participants were contributors. In addition, the social support provided through the activity app followed social support constructs. In sum, PA apps are a promising tool for delivering virtual social support to enhance PA engagement and have the potential to make a widespread impact on PA promotion. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01869348; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01869348


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anubhuti Poudyal ◽  
Alastair van Heerden ◽  
Ashley Hagaman ◽  
Celia Islam ◽  
Ada Thapa ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: The social environment, including social support, social burden, and quality of interactions, influences a range of health outcomes, including mental health. Passive audio data collection on mobile phones (e.g., episodic recording of the auditory environment without requiring any active input from the phone user) enables new opportunities to understand the social environment. We evaluated the use of passive audio collection on mobile phones as a window onto the relationship between the social environment within a study of mental health among adolescent mothers in Nepal.Methods: We enrolled 23 adolescent mothers who first participated in qualitative interviews to describe their social support and identify sounds potentially associated with that support. Then episodic recordings were collected for two weeks from the same women using an app to capture 30 seconds of audio every 15 minutes from 4am to 9pm. Audio data were processed and classified using a pretrained model. Each classification category was accompanied by a predicted accuracy score. Manual validation of the machine-predicted speech and non-speech categories (10%) was done for accuracy.Results: In qualitative interviews, mothers described a range of positive and negative social interactions and the sounds that accompanied these. Potential positive sounds included adult speech and laughter, baby babbling and laughter, and sounds from baby toys. Sounds characterizing negative stimuli included yelling, crying, screaming by adults and crying by babies. Sounds associated with social isolation included silence and TV or radio noises. Speech comprised of 43% of all passively recorded audio clips (n=7725). Manual validation showed a 23% false positive rate and 62% false-negative rate for speech, demonstrating potential underestimation of speech exposure. Other common sounds included music and vehicular noises.Conclusions: Passively capturing audio has the potential to improve understanding of the social environment. However, the limited accuracy of the pre-trained model used in this study did not adequately distinguish between positive and negative social interactions. To improve the contribution of passive audio collection to understanding the social environment, future work should improve the accuracy of audio categorization, code for constellations of sounds, and combine audio with other smartphone data collection such as location and activity.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zakkoyya H Lewis ◽  
Maria C Swartz ◽  
Eloisa Martinez ◽  
Elizabeth J Lyons

BACKGROUND Physical activity (PA) is critical for maintaining independence and delaying mobility disability in aging adults. However, 27 to 44% of older adults in the United States are meeting the recommended PA level. Activity trackers are proving to be a promising tool to promote PA adherence through activity tracking and enhanced social interaction features. Although social support has been known to be an influential behavior change technique to promote PA, how middle-aged and older adults use the social interaction feature of mobile apps to provide virtual support to promote PA engagement remains mostly underexplored. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to describe the social support patterns of middle-aged and older adults using a mobile app as part of a behavioral PA intervention. METHODS Data from 35 participants (mean age 61.66 [SD 6] years) in a 12-week, home-based activity intervention were used for this secondary mixed method analysis. Participants were provided with a Jawbone Up24 activity monitor and an Apple iPad Mini installed with the UP app to facilitate self-monitoring and social interaction. All participants were given an anonymous account and encouraged to interact with other participants using the app. Social support features included comments and likes. Thematic coding was used to identify the type of social support provided within the UP app and characterize the levels of engagement from users. Participants were categorized as superusers or contributors, and passive participants were categorized as lurkers based on the literature. RESULTS Over the 12-week intervention, participants provided a total of 3153 likes and 1759 comments. Most participants (n=25) were contributors, with 4 categorized as superusers and 6 categorized as lurkers. Comments were coded as emotional support, informational support, instrumental support, self-talk, and other, with emotional support being the most prevalent type. CONCLUSIONS Our cohort of middle-aged and older adults was willing to use the social network feature in an activity app to communicate with anonymous peers. Most of our participants were contributors. In addition, the social support provided through the activity app followed social support constructs. In sum, PA apps are a promising tool for delivering virtual social support to enhance PA engagement and have the potential to make a widespread impact on PA promotion. CLINICALTRIAL ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01869348; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01869348


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daan Duppen ◽  
Michaël C. J. Van der Elst ◽  
Sarah Dury ◽  
Deborah Lambotte ◽  
Liesbeth De Donder ◽  
...  

Increasingly, policymakers assume that informal networks will provide care for frail older people. While the literature has mainly discussed the role of the family, broader social networks are also considered to be important. However, these social networks can diminish in later life. This systematic review investigates whether the social environment increases the risk of frailty or helps to prevent it. Findings from 15 original studies were classified using five different factors, which denoted five dimensions of the social environment: (a) social networks, (b) social support, (c) social participation, (d) subjective neighborhood experience, and (e) socioeconomic neighborhood characteristics. The discussion highlights that the social environment and frailty are indeed related, and how the neighborhood dimensions and social participation had more consistent results than social support and social networks. Conclusively, recommendations are formulated to contemplate all dimensions of the social environment for further research examining frailty and community care.


Author(s):  
Carlos M. Arango-Paternina ◽  
Jhon F. Ramírez-Villada ◽  
Annie A. Tibaduiza-Romero ◽  
Leonardo Rodríguez-Perdomo

The identification of social network factors associated with gait speed may offer different perspectives for improving community and clinical interventions for older adults. The objective of this study was to explore the associations of the social network of friends with gait speed. This was a cross-sectional study conducted in a sample of 128 older adult women recruited in community groups of physical activity. Clinical screening, social network questions, body composition evaluation, and gait speed test were applied to the participants. Logistic regression models were used to analyze associations between characteristics of the social network of friends and high gait speed. Findings indicated that social isolation was not associated with high gait speed and that popularity and proportion of friends with high gait speed were significantly associated with high gait speed. Findings suggested that there was a relationship between social network factors and the ability to perform high gait speed.


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