Parents and Children Active Together Study

Summary

The purpose of this study is to examine physical activity habit formation in parents and if this can increase moderate to vigorous physical activity behavior in their children over six months.The Primary Research Question is:

Does the habit formation condition result in increased moderate-vigorous intensity physical activity of the child compared to the control (education) and education + planning conditions at six months? Hypothesis: Child physical activity will be higher for the habit formation condition in comparison to the more standard physical activity education and planning conditions at six months.

Conditions

• Physical Activity

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Habit formation intervention

In addition to the control content and the planning content, this intervention will include material provided to the family that assists with creating physical activity support habits. The material contains a discussion of what habits are, straightforward examples, planning and pointers for forming habits. A key component of the habit intervention will be planning for context-dependent repetition.

BEHAVIORAL

Physical activity planning intervention

This arm will receive the control education content, but will also be provided with family PA planning material. This material will include skill training content (workbook on how to plan for family PA). The material includes a brainstorming exercise for parents where they list physical activities they think their children have found fun in the past, as well as activities that they would find enjoyable to do as a family. We also have Canadian parental survey data on the most preferred co-physical activities for children 3-6. We will provide this material as prompts/suggestions. This list helps create the template for PA planning by contextualizing what the parents would like to do with their kids.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Canadian Cancer Society (CCS)

  collaborator OTHER

• University of British Columbia

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Victoria

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Ryan Rhodes, PhD · University of Victoria

• Mark Beauchamp, PhD · University of British Columbia

• Chris Blanchard, PhD · Dalhousie University

• Valerie Carson, PhD · University of Alberta

• Benjamin Gardner, PhD · King's College

• Darren Warburton, PhD · University of British Columbia

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

3 Years

Max Age

5 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-03-01

Primary Completion

2025-09-30

Completion

2025-12-31

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations