title: Parental report of outdoor playtime as a measure of physical activity in preschool-aged children.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Keeping young children physically active is an important strategy to promote their health and well-being. To our knowledge, survey measures of physical activity in preschool-aged children are unavailable. Time spent playing outdoors is a potential surrogate measure of physical activity in preschoolers, but parental-report measures of outdoor playtime have not been evaluated.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To compare a direct measure of physical activity in preschool-aged children with 2 parental-report measures of children's outdoor playtime.
  
  
  METHODS
  Three days of recording with a 3-dimensional accelerometer were used to directly measure physical activity in 250 preschool-aged children. We calculated each child's average vector magnitude per minute while awake. Parental report of outdoor playtime was measured in 2 ways: (1). the score from a checklist used to record outdoor playtime over 3 days and (2). a recall of the usual minutes of daily outdoor playtime during the prior month. We calculated Spearman rank correlation coefficients among these 3 measures.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean age of the children was 44 months, 87.7% were white, and 12.3% were black. Parents reported that their children spent a mean (+/-SD) of 146 (+/-113) minutes playing outdoors each day. Physical activity as measured by the accelerometer was significantly correlated to the time spent playing outdoors, as measured by the checklist (r = 0.33, P <.001) and recall (r = 0.20, P =.003).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Parental-report measures of outdoor playtime were significantly correlated to a direct measure of physical activity in preschool-aged children, and are worthy of future evaluation as a survey measure.
authors.affiliation: Divisions of General and Community Pediatrics and Cardiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. burdette@email.chop.edu
authors.forename: Hillary L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Burdette
authors.forename: Robert C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Whitaker
authors.forename: Stephen R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Daniels
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D010988:Play and Playthings; D012621:Seasons; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors