Niños Activos
The goal of Niños Activos is to develop a model and related measures of neighborhood environmental influences on physical activity of Hispanic American preschool children. The specific aims of the study are to:
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Conduct structured focus group sessions with primary caregivers of 3-5 year-old HA children to develop items for self-report measures of constructs (i.e., availability of places for physical activity and active-play equipment in the neighborhood, community cohesion, neighborhood informal social control, perceived neighborhood safety, and primary caregiver’s practices related to child’s physical activity) for a model of neighborhood environmental influences on physical activity of HA preschool children
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Develop items for self-report measures of constructs for a model of neighborhood social and physical environmental influences on physical activity of HA preschool children
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Examine psychometric properties (reliability, construct and criterion validity) of newly-developed self-report measures of a model of neighborhood environmental influences on physical activity of HA preschool children
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Assess the usefulness and feasibility of complementing accelerometry-based physical activity measurement with spatial data from portable global positioning system units to determine where physical activity occurs in HA preschool children.
Niños Activos is being led by Dr. Teresia O’Connor at the Baylor College of Medicine’s Children’s Nutrition Research Center (CNRC) in collaboration with Dr. Rebecca Lee and the Texas Obesity Research Center. For more information about Niños Activos, visit the CNRC website.