Abstract

INTRODUCTION:

Current guidelines recommend school-age children accumulate at least 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) on most days of the week. Little is known about the activity level of school-age children with intellectual disabilities (ID).

PURPOSE:

To evaluate physical activity patterns of children with ID during three school settings: adapted physical education (APE, 55 min), classroom (CR, 55 min), and recess (RE, 25 min).

METHODS:

HR was measured by telemetry for 15 youth (6 boys, 9 girls, 8.8 +/- 2.2 yr) with ID during APE, CR, and RE on three nonconsecutive school days. Resting HR (RHR) was measured on three nonconsecutive days between 8:00 and 8:45 a.m. The mean of the five lowest RHR was used to create MVPA cutoffs. Total MVPA was determined by the mean time spent (min) above 1.25% RHR (PAHR-25 Index) in each of the three school settings. Three (one for each environment) random effects two-level models (measures nested within child) were used to describe the proportion of time students spend in MVPA across the three environments and to examine the within-child variation across measures within locations.

RESULTS:

The total daily MVPA across the three environments was 83.5 min (72.9-94 min). Intraclass correlations ranged from 0.06 to 0.53, suggesting considerable within-child variation across the three observations across settings.

CONCLUSIONS:

Although variation existed across observations for each child, on average, children met and exceeded recommendations for 60 min of MVPA during the day. Theses findings suggest that through allocation of time for APE and RE, coupled with programming designed to maximize activity opportunities, students with ID can achieve recommended levels of MVPA.