24-Hour movement behaviours and COVID-19 among children in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A repeat cross-sectional study

Abstract

This study investigated how children's 24-hour (24-h) movement behaviours were affected by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Previous research examined 24-h movement behaviours in Saudi Arabia seven months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. This repeat cross-sectional study examined changes in 24-h movement behaviours 12 months after the WHO declaration. The Time 2 survey repeated five months (1 March - 15 May 2021) after Time 1 survey (1 October - 11 November 2020). The survey was distributed to parents of children aged 6-12 years across Saudi Arabia via an online survey. Children were classified as meeting 24-h movement guidelines if they reported uninterrupted sleep for 9-11 ​h per night, ≤ 2 ​h of recreational sedentary screen time (RST) per day and ≥ 60 ​min of moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA) per day. A total of 1 045 parents from all regions of Saudi Arabia responded (42.4%). Only 1.8% of children met all components of the guidelines, compared to 3.4% in Time 1. In the present study, girls spent more days per week in MVPA ≥ 60 ​min duration than boys (3.0 vs 2.6; p ​= ​0.025), while boys had spent more days per week engaged in activities that strengthened muscle and bone than girls (3.0 vs 2.8; p ​= ​0.019). Healthy levels of physical activity (PA), sedentary behaviour (SB) and sleep further declined in Saudi children five months after the Time 1 survey. These challenges require urgent intervention to ensure children's movement behaviours improve as Saudi Arabia moves out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords

Sleep / Sedentary behaviour / Physical activity / Children / COVID-19

Authors' contributions

Conceptualization, Y.A.A., A.-M.P. and A.D.O.; methodology, Y.A.A., A.-M.P. and A.D.O.; data collection and management, Y.A.A., formal analysis, Y.A.A., writing—original draft preparation, Y.A.A.; writing—review and editing, all authors. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Ethical approval statement

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was obtained from the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia (2639/2021) and the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Wollongong, Australia (HE288/2021). This survey collected data between March and May, 2021. A link to an online survey in Arabic, using the Qualtrics platform, was provided to parents. Before answering the survey, parents were provided with an online parent information sheet and consent form as the first page of the survey.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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