Proportion of 3- and 4-year-old children meeting individual and combinations of 24-hour movement guidelines across five Canadian provinces: a SUNRISE study

Surveillance of children’s sleep, physical activity (PA), and sedentary behaviour is a cornerstone of movement behaviour and health research, providing key information for guiding future health promotion policies, programs, and services. Systematic monitoring of these behaviours in preschool-aged children is lacking, particularly for certain sub-groups (males/females, urban/rural areas). This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the prevalence of 3- to 4-year-old children across five Canadian provinces meeting the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years, while examining associations with sex, age, and urban/rural location. Sleep and PA data were collected for 7 continuous days using waist-worn ActiGraph wGT3X+ accelerometers. Sleep duration was also gathered from parent reports, as were sedentary behaviour measures (screen and restrained time). Children were classified as meeting guidelines if they accumulated 10–13 h/day of sleep, ≥ 180 min/day of total PA (TPA), including ≥ 60 min/day of moderate-to-vigorous-intensity PA (MVPA), ≤ 1 h/day of screen time, and ≤ 1 h of restrained sedentary bouts. Within the final sample ( n = 631), 29.0% met overall movement guidelines when prioritizing accelerometer-estimated measures. Between 74.6% and 92.0% met the sleep recommendation (accelerometer-estimated versus parent-reported), while 92.4% met PA recommendations (TPA: 100%, MVPA: 92.4%). The proportion meeting sedentary behaviour recommendations was lower (40.7%), with 57.1 and 71.8% meeting recommendations for screen time and restrained time, respectively. Females were significantly less likely to meet the MVPA recommendation (a OR = 0.37, 95% CI [0.19, 0.68]) than males. Urban children were more likely to meet recommendations for sedentary time than their rural counterparts (a OR = 1.51, 95% CI [1.09, 2.09]). Older children were less likely to meet overall guidelines (a OR = 0.49, 95% CI [0.31, 0.77]) and sleep recommendations (a OR = 0.96, 95% CI [0.93, 0.98]), but more likely to meet the MVPA recommendation (a OR = 1.08, 95% CI [1.03, 1.14]). While most children in this sample met sleep and PA recommendations, fewer met sedentary time recommendations. A focus should be placed on public health policies to limit sedentary time in all children, while continuing to encourage healthy sleep and PA. Specific strategies should also be developed to support young females’ PA participation.