Visualising children’s activity patterns and their association with obesity status and geography

Abstract

Accelerometer data are increasingly being used to assess physical activity patterns. The growing availability of such data provides both opportunities and challenges for turning information into knowledge. This research aims to visualise the relationship between children’s time use, obesity status, travel to school distance, and area level deprivation using accelerometer data from the Neighbourhoods for Active Kids project. An innovative open source visualisation tool, called a time-activity diagram, was developed using R software. It presents the timing and sequencing of activities at both the individual and aggregated level, providing immediate insights into the significance of children’s activity trajectories and their association with health and geography. The knowledge derived from the visualisations can promote healthy time use behaviours and support policy intervention. The open source tool is data driven and can easily be adapted to map other accelerometer or similar data.