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Brit I. Saksvig, PhD; Diane J. Catellier, DrPH; Karin Pfeiffer, PhD; Kathryn H. Schmitz, PhD; Terry Conway, PhD; Scott Going, PhD; Dianne Ward, EdD; Patty Strikmiller, MS; Margarita S. Treuth, PhD

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2007;161(2):153-158.

Objective  To examine how "travel by walking" before and after school contributes to total physical activity of adolescent girls.

Design  Cross-sectional sample.

Setting  Thirty-six middle schools from Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, Louisiana, California, and South Carolina participating in the Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls (TAAG).

Participants  Seventeen hundred twenty-one sixth-grade girls consented to participate; adequate information was available for 1596 participants (93%).

Main Exposure  Travel by walking before school, after school, and before and after school combined assessed from the 3-Day Physical Activity Recall.

Main Outcome Measure  Mean minutes of physical activity measured by accelerometry were estimated for total physical activity (light, moderate, vigorous), moderate to vigorous activity (MVPA), and MVPA of 3 metabolic equivalents.

Results  Travel by walking was reported by 14% of participants before school and 18% after school. Girls who reported travel by walking before and after school (combined) had 13.7 more minutes (95% confidence interval, 1.2-26.3) of total physical activity and 4.7 more minutes (95% confidence interval, 2.2-7.2) of MVPA than girls who did not report this activity. Before-school and after-school walkers (but not both) accumulated 2.5 more minutes (95% confidence interval, 0.10-4.9) and 2.2 more minutes (95% confidence interval, 0.24-4.2) of MVPA on an average weekday, respectively, than nonwalkers.

Conclusion  Our results provide evidence that walking to and from school increases weekday minutes of total physical activity and MVPA for middle-school girls.

Author Affiliations: Department of Kinesiology, University of Maryland, College Park (Dr Saksvig); Department of Biostatistics (Dr Catellier) and School of Public Health (Dr Ward), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Department of Exercise Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia (Dr Pfeiffer); Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Dr Schmitz); Graduate School of Public Health, San Diego State University, San Diego, Calif (Dr Conway); Department of Physiology and Nutritional Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson (Dr Going); Department of Biostatistics, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, La (Ms Strikmiller); Center for Human Nutrition, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Md (Dr Treuth).

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