The Use of Data From Wearable Technology to Co-develop School-specific Physical Activity Interventions
Condition: Physical Activity
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      Increasing physical activity is vital for children's physical and mental health. It is
      important to address inactivity early and engage children in positive behaviours which can be
      sustained throughout life. Teachers are well placed to understand and influence in-school
      factors impacting children's physical activity. As wearable technologies continue to improve
      and become more accessible, they offer the opportunity to engage schools in the data
      collection process, as well as providing them with the capacity to monitor strategies
      designed to improve physical activity. This study is a within-subject, pre-post, co-developed
      intervention design.
    

Detailed description: 
      Previous interventions have not successfully increased physical activity levels in primary
      schools. This is arguably due to a lack of comprehensive data collection methods and the lack
      of co-involvement of teachers and children in intervention design. In previous research,
      accelerometers have been used by researchers to quantify children's physical activity levels.
      However, these have been research-grade devices which require a more complex analysis to
      extract results; because of this, these types of measurement tools have not been utilised by
      schools. This study will aim to utilise user-friendly technologies which can engage schools
      in the data collection process and be employed by schools to implement and measure strategies
      designed to increase physical activity by providing immediate feedback.

      This project aims to investigate whether data from wearable technologies can be used to
      inform primary school-based practices and improve children's physical activity within school
      hours using co-developed interventions. This project is a participatory mixed-methods design
      in two phases. 7-9 schools will be recruited. The first phase in each school involves
      baseline measures of pupils' physical activity for 2-weeks, using accelerometers which have
      been specifically designed for school use. Pupils will be blinded to the physical activity
      data during this period. During this 2-week baseline teachers will be instructed to carry out
      lessons as normal, not changing their behaviour, or encouraging the pupils' physical
      activity. Data visualisations will be created from the 2-weeks of physical activity data
      collected within each school. Teachers will then be interviewed online, using Microsoft
      Teams, and encouraged to reflect on the physical activity data and co-develop 3-5 action
      points or strategies to increase children's physical activity. Teachers will then be asked to
      implement these action points over the subsequent 2-weeks, where again children's physical
      activity will be measured with the accelerometers. This time children will not be blinded to
      the data and can receive physical activity feedback if this is a strategy selected by their
      teacher. These changes will be at each schoolteacher's discretion and managed in a way they
      deem most appropriate. Following these 2-week changes teachers will be interviewed again
      about their experiences of using the technology and implementing strategies to encourage
      physical activity. They will then be shown similar data visualisations as before, comparing
      changes in pupils' physical activity between each 2-week period.
    

Intervention name(s): Data-driven and teacher led school based strategies.
Intervention type(s): Other
Intervention description(s): The intervention is individualised to each school, depending on the teacher led strategies which are data-informed
Allocation: Non-Randomized
Intervention model: Factorial Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Physical Activity; Primary School Children; Wearable Technology; Data Driven Intervention; School-based Intervention; Co-design