Excessive school bag weight is a barrier to active transport to school (ATS). This study examined parents' and adolescents' perceptions of school bag weights and actual school bag weights for adolescents in New Zealand.
Parents (n = 331; 76.7% women) completed a survey. Adolescents (n = 682; age 15.1 ± 1.4 years; 57.3% boys) completed a survey, underwent anthropometry, and had their school bags weighed.
Overall, 68.3% of parents perceived that adolescents' school bags were too heavy to carry to school. This parental perception differed by adolescents' mode of transport to school (active/motorized/combined: 35.1%/78.4%/68.8%, p < 0.001). Adolescents perceived that their school bags were too heavy to carry to walk (57.8%) or cycle (65.8%) to school. Adolescent perceptions differed by mode of transport to school (for walking (active/motorized/combined): 30.9%/69.2%/55.9% agree, p < 0.001; for cycling: 47.9%/72.8%/67.7%; p < 0.001). Actual school bag weight was, on average, 5.6 ± 2.1 kg. Relative school bag weight (% of body weight) was higher for boys and underweight adolescents compared to their counterparts. Neither absolute nor relative school bag weight differed by mode of transport to school.
School bag weight was perceived a barrier to ATS and was a greater perceived barrier among users of motorized versus active transport. Perceptions of school bag weights should be considered in future ATS interventions.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 11. 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 19 October 2022.
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#3,844,530
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Outputs from Children
#485
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#65,620
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Outputs of similar age from Children
#10
of 42 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,964,135 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 86th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,052 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 42 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its contemporaries.
