Lifestyle Behaviours of Children and Adolescents During the First Two Waves of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Switzerland and Their Relation to Well-Being: An Observational Study

  1. Gabriela P. Peralta
  2. Anne-Linda Camerini
  3. Sarah R. Haile
  4. Christian R. Kahlert
  5. Elsa Lorthe
  6. Laura Marciano
  7. Andres Nussbaumer
  8. Thomas Radtke
  9. Agne Ulyte
  10. Milo A. Puhan
  11. Susi Kriemler

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Abstract

Objectives: To describe changes in adherence to recommendations for physical activity (PA), screen time (ST), and sleep duration over the first two waves of the pandemic in Switzerland, and to assess the associations of these lifestyle behaviours with life satisfaction and overall health as well-being indicators.

Methods: In this observational study, we included 2,534 participants (5–16 years) from four Swiss cantons. Participants, or their parents, completed repeated questionnaires and reported on their (child’s) lifestyle and well-being, between June 2020 and April 2021. We used linear and logistic regression models to assess the associations between lifestyle and well-being.

Results: The percentage of children meeting the recommendations for PA and ST decreased from the pre-pandemic period to the first wave, with a slight recovery during the second wave. Participants meeting all three recommendations during the second wave were more likely to report excellent health (OR: 1.65 [95% CI: 1.00–2.76]) and higher life satisfaction ( β : 0.46 [0.16–0.77]) in early 2021 than participants not meeting any recommendation.

Conclusion: We showed a substantial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s and adolescents’ lifestyle, and a positive association between meeting lifestyle recommendations and well-being.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.3389/ijph.2022.1604978
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.11.29.21267019: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of all regions (TI: 2020-01514; SG/GR: 2020-01247; ZH: 2020-01336).
    Consent: All participants and/or their parents provided informed consent.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    RandomizationPrimary schools were randomly selected from the list of all schools in the canton of ZH and matched with the geographically closest secondary school.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    We need to acknowledge some limitations. Lifestyle behaviours were self-reported or based on parental-report, with potential bias in the estimation of PA, ST, and sleep. In ZH, questions for PA referred to hours per day (instead of hours per week), which could have led to an overestimation of PA for this subgroup. Well-being indicators were also reported by parents for younger children and therefore some bias is possible for these measures. In addition, the fact that participants included in the study were more often from families with Swiss nationality and a high education level than those excluded due to missing data may not allow the generalizability of our results to populations with more ethnic variability and lower socio-economic status. Finally, although we accounted for a wide range of potential confounders when assessing the associations between lifestyle and well-being, residual confounding may still be a concern as we did not consider other factors such as existing psychological problems, parental mental health or family cohesion. In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative effect on children’s and adolescents’ lifestyle behaviours up to 2021, but some recovery has taken place. Policymakers should imperatively consider the balance of disease prevention and promotion of a healthy lifestyle when (re-)activating restrictive measures. In addition, future public health strategies aiming to promote children’s and adolescents’ well-being should target sufficie...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.11.29.21267019 on medRxiv