Individual and day‐to‐day differences in domain‐specific physical activity of 10‐ to 11‐year‐old children in Denmark—Measured using GPS and accelerometry

Objective: Physical activity (PA) and the achievement of 60 min of moderate-to-physical-activity daily is declining in school-aged-children, and effective strategies to increase PA is needed. We aimed to examine the individual and day-to-day distribution of PA on schooldays among children aged 10–11 in 4 domains—school, home, transport, and other. Methods: Data were collected from August to September 2020 using accelerometer and GPS data to measure daily PA-levels and to locate in which domain PA occurs. Daily PA-levels were assessed in each domain, and analyses of the individual and day-to-day differences in PA-levels were calculated. Results: The school domain contributed the most to children's daily MVPA with 47% of average MVPA, followed by the home domain with 26% of daily average MVPA, the other domain with 19% of daily average MVPA and the transport domain with 8% of daily average MVPA. Our results showed individual differences in where PA occurs, day-to-day differences in total MVPA and day-to-day differences in the MVPA-levels across domains. Conclusions: The school domain contributed the most to children's MVPA-levels followed by the domains of home, other, and transport. Our study indicated that PA-levels and the distribution of PA across domains differ from day-to-day. Future interventions should target more than one domain to accommodate these individual- and day-to-day differences in the goal of increasing PA-levels and to reduce the decline in PA seen from childhood to adolescence.