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How has the COVID-19 lockdown affected children’s physical activity behaviours?

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Abstract

The implementation of COVID-19 restrictions impacted the day-to-day lives of individuals and their ability to participate in regular community activities; this has led to a decrease in the physical activity of people of all ages, but particularly of children and adolescents. The aim of this study was to investigate physical activity (PA) and mood behaviours in children before and during COVID-19 in Iran. In this study, self-rating questionnaires covering former and current PA patterns and mood were used to collect data on 2047 children. The data collected show the comparisons between levels of PA before and during COVID-19; the duration and intensity of PA in this period varied significantly in both girls and boys. The mood between genders during COVID-19 showed that there was no significant difference. Finally, it should be mentioned that the type of PA plays an important role in the activity of people in these conditions.

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Data availability statement

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Sport Sciences Research Institute of Iran for supporting this project. In addition, the authors are grateful to all athletes who took part in the present study. We thank Daniel Scott for proofreading and editing

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sports Science, Faculty of Sports Science, Gedik University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Seyed Houtan Shahidi, Mehmet Yavuz Taşkıran & Fahimeh Hassani

  2. Department of Sport Psychology, Sport Sciences Research Institute, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Aghababa

Authors
  1. Seyed Houtan Shahidi
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  2. Alireza Aghababa
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  3. Mehmet Yavuz Taşkıran
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  4. Fahimeh Hassani
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Contributions

Conceptualization, AA; methodology, AA, SHS; software, FH; validation, AA; formal analysis FH; investigation, AA, FH; resources, AA, YT and SHH; data curation, FH and SHH; writing—original draft preparation, FH; writing—review and editing, AA, FH, and SHS, YT; visualisation, AA and YT; supervision, YT; project administration, AA. All the authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fahimeh Hassani.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Institutional review board statement

The Human Research Ethics Board at the Sport Sciences Research Institute of Iran approved the study (approval ID: IR.SSRC.REC.1399.070), which was performed in accordance with the seventh and current revision of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study. Children were approached via social network sites (SNS) to participate in the present online survey on past and current physical activity behaviour, mood states. On the first page of the online survey, participants were informed about the aims of the study, the anonymous data gathering, the confidential data handling, and the ethical approval of the study. Next, to provide informed consent, participants clicked a box of agreement.

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Shahidi, S.H., Aghababa, A., Taşkıran, M.Y. et al. How has the COVID-19 lockdown affected children’s physical activity behaviours?. Sport Sci Health 19, 1003–1013 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11332-023-01077-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11332-023-01077-5

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