To control for potential seasonal differences in physical SCH 900776 chemical structure activity, the hours of daylight available on the first day of data collection were calculated for each participant and treated as a potential confounder

in all analyses. Descriptive statistics were calculated for all variables, histograms plotted and skewness and kurtosis checked. Given that children’s physical activity behaviours may be gender-specific (Jago et al., 2005), all analyses were run separately for boys and girls. Analysis of variance tests (ANOVAs) and follow-up Scheffé tests were used to examine differences in physical activity levels across the four categories of frequency of active play. Linear regression models were selleck chemical used to estimate the extent to which active play predicted leisure-time and total daily physical activity. All models were adjusted for child BMI SDS, household IMD score, parent education and hours of daylight. Robust standard errors were used to account for the clustering of participants within schools. Analyses were performed in STATA version 10.0 (College Station, Texas) with alpha set at 0.05. Descriptive statistics are presented for all participants and by gender in Table 1. Independent sample t-tests indicated that boys engaged in more physical activity than girls after school, at the weekend

and across the whole week for MVPA (p = < 0.01) and CPM (p = < 0.01). ANOVA results are presented in Table 2. Girls who engaged in frequent active play (5 or more days per week) had higher mean activity levels (CPM) and minutes of MVPA on weekdays and across the whole week than girls who engaged in active

play less frequently (never or 1–2 days per week). There were no differences in physical activity (CPM, MVPA) between active play categories at weekends. In contrast, boys who engaged in frequent active play had higher mean activity levels (CPM) on weekdays and weekend days, as well as across the week, compared to boys who engaged in active play less frequently. Linear regression analyses indicated that frequent active play was associated with mean activity levels (CPM) on weekdays after school (girls: p = 0.02; boys: p = < 0.01), but was only significant on Tolmetin weekend days for boys (p = < 0.01). Frequent active play was also associated with children’s MVPA on weekdays after school (girls: p = < 0.01; boys: p = 0.03) but not on weekend days for either sex. Finally, frequent active play was associated with mean activity levels (CPM) across the whole week (girls: p = < 0.01; boys: p = < 0.01), but was only associated with MVPA across the whole week in girls (p = < 0.01) ( Table 3). The frequency of active play was associated with both leisure-time and total daily physical activity in 10- to 11-year-old children, but associations varied by gender and physical activity outcome variable.