Longitudinal changes and correlates of meeting WHO recommended levels of physical activity in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings from the HEBECO study

  1. John J. Mitchell
  2. Samuel J. Dicken
  3. Dimitra Kale
  4. Aleksandra Herbec
  5. Emma Beard
  6. Lion Shahab

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen repeated government enforced restrictions on movement. This study aimed to evaluate longitudinal trends in physical activity (PA) in a self-selected UK-based sample and identify the key correlates of these trends.

Methods

From 23 April 2020 to 30 January 2021, measures of PA engagement were collected in a sample of 1,947 UK-based adults. Generalised estimating equations (GEE) explored trends in PA engagement over time, and how sociodemographic, health and contextual factors impacted participant’s attainment of World Health Organization (WHO) recommended levels of PA (constituting muscle strengthening activity (MSA), and moderate or vigorous PA (MVPA)).

Results

While one in five achieved the recommended levels of PA in the first UK lockdown in April-June 2020 (19.5%, 95%CI: 17.8–21.3%) and a similar proportion in June-July 2020 (17.7%, 95%CI: 16.1–19.5%), this reduced during the period of eased restrictions in August-September 2020 (15.2%, 95%CI: 13.7–16.9%) and the second UK lockdown in November 2020-January 2021 (14.1%, 95%CI: 12.6–15.9%). Similar trends were observed for MSA and MVPA individually. Better quality of life, higher socioeconomic position and pre-COVID-19 PA levels were associated with meeting the WHO recommended levels of PA, while those living with overweight or obesity, a limiting health condition, or isolating showed the inverse associations. Time-specific associations with MSA or MVPA were observed for gender and age.

Conclusion

Reductions in PA levels throughout the first strict lockdown continued without reversal during the ensuing period. The association of negative change with socioeconomic and health-related indices points towards deepening health inequities during the pandemic.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0273530
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.30.21264358: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableSociodemographic factors: Sociodemographic explanatory variables included age (continuous), gender (female vs all others) and ethnicity (white vs all others), measured at baseline and included as fixed (time-invariant) covariates.
    RandomizationMissing data were treated as missing at random.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Analyses were conducted using SPSS 22.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA).
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.09.30.21264358v1 on medRxiv