Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport
Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport
5 years ago

The effect of a physical activity intervention on preschoolers’ fundamental motor skills — A cluster RCT

To assess the effect of a physical activity intervention delivered in the childcare centres (CC), with or without a parent-driven home physical activity component, on children’s fundamental motor skills (FMS). Design Six-month 3-arm cluster randomized controlled trial. Methods Preschoolers were recruited from 18 licensed CC. CC were randomly assigned to a typical curriculum comparison group (COM), childcare intervention alone (CC), or childcare intervention with parental component (CC+HOME). FMS was measured with the Test of Gross Motor Development-2. Linear mixed models were performed at the level of the individual while accounting for clustering. Results Raw locomotor skills score increased significantly in the CC group (mean difference=2.5 units, 95% Confidence Intervals, CI, 1.0–4.1, p<0.001) and the CC+HOME group (mean difference=2.4 units, 95% CI, 0.8–4.0, p<0.001) compared to the COM group. No significant (p>0.05) between group differences were observed in the raw object control skills, sum of raw scores, or gross motor quotient. No significant sex differences were found in any of the measured outcomes. Conclusions A physical activity intervention delivered in childcare with or without parents’ involvement was effective in increasing locomotor skills in preschoolers.

Publisher URL: www.sciencedirect.com/science

DOI: S1440244017317607

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.