Published In
Journal of Transport & Health
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
6-1-2025
Subjects
Children's health studies
Abstract
Introduction:
As daily physical activities, including active transportation, improve children's health, studying predictors of children's walking for all purposes rather than just walking to and from school is necessary. Relationships between the behavior, perceptions, and attitudes of children and their parents (or guardians) about walking are important because children's decisions about travel are not made independently of the influence of their parents or guardians. In addition, findings from cross-sectional studies may not be sufficient to explain children's walking since their relationship is persistent. Therefore, we examined the longitudinal relationship between children's and parents' perceptions and walking behavior.
Methods:
We used two-wave panel data of 182 children aged 4–16 and their parents in Portland, Oregon, USA. We estimated a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) to analyze the continuous relationships between children's and parent's perceptions and walking behaviors. Data were collected through surveys, accelerometers, and GPS units.
Results:
We found that when parents walked more, their children also walked more in both periods. Parents' positive safety perceptions about their children's walking environment in terms of strangers and traffic significantly increased children's walking time. Children's safety perceptions (only in the second period) and time-related perceived behavioral control (in both periods) affected their attitude toward walking but not walking time.
Conclusion:
Our study reveals meaningful relationships between the attitudes and behaviors of parents' and children's walking based on repeated observations over two years. Given our results, neighborhoods that are good for parents to walk in positively affect children's walking. Parental walking needs to precede to encourage continuous children's walking.
Rights
© 2025 Elsevier Ltd.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1016/j.jth.2025.102016
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/43784
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation Details
Kim, K. R., & Dill, J. (2025).Under the influence of parents: A longitudinal study of children’s walking. Journal of Transport & Health, 42, 102016.
Description
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication as: Under the influence of parents: A longitudinal study of children’s walking. Journal of Transport & Health, 42, 102016.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2025.102016