Evaluation of the UP4FUN intervention: a cluster randomized trial to reduce and break up sitting time in European 10-12-year-old children

Frøydis N Vik; Nanna Lien; Sveinung Berntsen; Ilse De Bourdeaudhuij; Monika Grillenberger; Yannis Manios; Eva Kovacs; Mai J M Chinapaw; Johannes Brug; Elling Bere

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0122612

Evaluation of the UP4FUN intervention: a cluster randomized trial to reduce and break up sitting time in European 10-12-year-old children

PLoS One. 2015 Mar 31;10(3):e0122612. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122612. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health, Sport and Nutrition, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway.
² Department of Nutrition, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
³ Department of Movement and Sport Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
⁴ Department of Nutritional Behaviour, Max Rubner-Institute, Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food, Karlsruhe, Germany.
⁵ Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Harokopio University, Athens, Greece.
⁶ Department of Pediatrics, Pecs University, Pecs, Hungary.
⁷ Department of Public and Occupational Health and the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
⁸ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Abstract

Background: The UP4FUN intervention is a family-involved school-based intervention aiming at reducing and breaking up sitting time at home (with special emphasis on screen time), and breaking up sitting time in school among 10-12 year olds in Europe. The purpose of the present paper was to evaluate its short term effects.

Methodology/principal findings: A total of 3147 pupils from Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary and Norway participated in a school-randomized controlled trial. The intervention included 1-2 school lessons per week for a period of six weeks, along with assignments for the children and their parents. Screen time and breaking up sitting time were registered by self-report and total sedentary time and breaking up sitting time by accelerometry. The effect of the intervention on these behaviors was evaluated by multilevel regression analyses. All analyses were adjusted for baseline values and gender. Significance level was p≤0.01. No significant intervention effects were observed, neither for self-reported TV/DVD or computer/game console time, nor for accelerometer-assessed total sedentary time and number of breaks in sitting time. The intervention group, however, reported more positive attitudes towards (β = 0.25 (95% CI 0.11, 0.38)) and preferences/liking for (β = 0.20 (95% CI 0.08, 0.32)) breaking up sitting time than the control group.

Conclusions/significance: No significant intervention effect on self-reported screen time or accelerometer-assessed sedentary time or breaks in sitting time was observed, but positive effects on beliefs regarding breaking up sitting time were found in favor of the intervention group. Overall, these results do not warrant wider dissemination of the present UP4FUN intervention.

Trial registration: International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number Registry ISRCTN34562078.

Publication types

Randomized Controlled Trial
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Child
Europe
Humans
Motor Activity*
Program Development

Associated data

ISRCTN/ISRCTN34562078

Grants and funding

The ENERGY-project is funded by the Seventh Framework Programme (CORDIS FP7) of the European Commission, HEALTH (FP7-HEALTH-2007-B), Grant agreement no. 223254. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.