Educator engagement and interaction and children's physical activity in early childhood education and care settings: an observational study protocol

This study is the first of its kind to combine RTLSs and accelerometer data in ECEC settings. It is a cross-sectional study involving ~100 educators and 500 children from 11 ECEC settings in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. A RTLS and Actigraph GT3X+ accelerometers will be concurrently used to measure the level and location of the children's and educators' physical activity while in outside environments. Children and educators will wear accelerometers on their hip that record triaxial acceleration data at 100 Hz. Children and educators will also wear a tag watch on their wrist that transmits a signal to anchors of the RTLS and the triangulation of signals will identify their specific location. In addition to these, up to three random periods (10–25 min in length) will be used to collect observational data each day and assessed with the classroom assessment and scoring system to measure the quality of interactions. In conjunction with the real-time location system (RTLS) and accelerometers, these observations will measure the relationship between the quality of interactions and children's physical activity. Ethics and dissemination The results of this study will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and presentations. Ethical approval was obtained through the University of Wollongong Human Research Ethics Committee (HE14/330).
Source: BMJ Open - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Open access, Epidemiology Protocol Source Type: research