Van Dyck et al. BMC Public Health 2011, 11:668 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/11/668 R E S E A R C H A R T I C L E Open Access Socio-demographic, psychosocial and home- environmental attributes associated with adults’ domestic screen time Delfien Van Dyck1,2*, Greet Cardon2, Benedicte Deforche2,3, Neville Owen4,5, Katrien De Cocker2, Katrien Wijndaele1,2,6 and Ilse De Bourdeaudhuij2 Abstract Background: Sedentary behaviors (involving prolonged sitting time) are associated with deleterious health consequences, independent of (lack of) physical activity. To inform interventions, correlates of prevalent sedentary behaviors need to be identified. We examined associations of socio-demographic, home-environmental and psychosocial factors with adults’ TV viewing time and leisure-time Internet use; and whether psychosocial and environmental correlates differed according to gender, age and educational attainment. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Ghent, Belgium, between March and May 2010. Respondents to a mail-out survey (n = 419; 20-65 years; mean age 48.5 [12.1] years; 47.3% men) completed a questionnaire on sedentary behaviors and their potential socio-demographic, psychosocial and home environmental correlates. Statistical analyses were performed using multiple linear regression models. Results: The independent variables explained 31% of the variance in TV viewing time and 38% of the variance in leisure-time Internet use. Higher education, greater perceived pros of and confidence about reducing TV time were negatively associated with TV viewing time; older age, higher body mass index, larger TV set size and greater perceived cons of reducing TV time showed positive associations. Perceived pros of and confidence about reducing Internet use were negatively associated with leisure-time Internet use; higher education, number of computers in the home, positive family social norms about Internet use and perceived cons of reducing Internet use showed positive associations. None of the socio-demographic factors moderated these associations. Conclusions: Educational level, age, self-efficacy and pros/cons were the most important correlates identified in this study. If further cross-sectional and longitudinal research can confirm these findings, tailored interventions focusing on both psychosocial and environmental factors in specific population subgroups might be most effective to reduce domestic screen time. Keywords: TV viewing time, leisure-time Internet use, Belgium, sedentary behavior, ecological model Background Over the past years, much research has focused on the health benefits and determinants of regular physical activity (PA) in adults [1]. To gain insight into these determinants, ecological models of health behavior are frequently used as a theoretical framework [2]. These models identify factors at multiple levels (intrapersonal, socio-cultural, physical environmental and policy) and * Correspondence: delfien.vandyck@ugent.be 1Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), 1000 Brussels, Belgium Full list of author information is available at the end of the article emphasize the importance of developing combined inter- ventions to achieve behavior change. For PA, the most important determinants are becoming clear [3], which is helpful to develop effective interventions to increase PA and to prevent chronic diseases. Recently, sedentary behaviors (involving prolonged sit- ting time; SB) also have been found to be associated with elevated risk of obesity, cardio-metabolic risk profile, dia- betes, cardiovascular disease, specific cancers and overall and cardiovascular mortality [4-7]. These deleterious associations exist independent of the PA level and have © 2011 Dyck et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.