Hearing and vision impairments/problems are associated with increased risk of premature mortality in adulthood. One potential pathway explaining this association is reduced levels of physical activity. Reductions in activity levels due to sensory impairments may commence earlier in life; however, associations between sensory impairments/problems and activity levels in childhood are not well understood.
The objective of this study was to examine associations between hearing and vision problems and objectively measured activity levels in a representative sample of British children.
Data were drawn from sweep 4 of the Millennium Cohort Study, a prospective cohort study among children aged 7. Child hearing and vision problems were reported by parents in a postal survey. Children were also invited to have their physical activity measured objectively via accelerometry. A total of 6410 children had valid accelerometry data accompanied by complete survey data on the variables of interest. The main outcomes were objectively measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, steps and sedentary time. Adjusted linear regression was used to examine associations between vision and hearing problems and objectively measured activity levels.
In this sample of 7-year old children, 16.7% (n = 1068) had a reported vision problem and 11.6% (n = 745) had a hearing problem. Reported vision problems in both eyes, but not one eye, was associated with 2 fewer minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day (B = -2.1 95% Confidence Intervals [CI] -3.9 to -0.4) and almost 200 fewer steps per day (B = -198.4 95% CI, -398.4 to 1.6). Hearing problems were not associated with activity levels in either one or both ears.
Children with visual problems affecting both eyes, but not one eye, are likely to have lower levels of physical activity. Strategies to promote physical activity in children with visual problems are warranted.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 15. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 29 August 2018.
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#3,060,619
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Outputs from Disability and Health Journal
#143
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#43,062
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Outputs of similar age from Disability and Health Journal
#2
of 13 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,047,019 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,029 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 13 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 84% of its contemporaries.
