CANPLAY study: Secular trends in steps/day amongst 5–19 year-old Canadians between 2005 and 2014

• We examined secular trends in physical activity for 5–19 year-old Canadians between 2005 and 2014.
• Objectively measured physical activity decreased amongst boys, girls and within each age group.
• The national policy goal to increase mean steps/day by 2015 has not been met.

IntroductionThe Canadian Physical Activity Levels Among Youth (CANPLAY) study collected pedometer data from eight surveys between 2005 and 2014, making it a unique database of objective population physical activity surveillance. The purpose of this study was to describe secular physical activity trends for 5–19 year olds.MethodsCanadian children from nationally representative samples (10,000 recruited, n ≅ 5500 per survey) were mailed a pedometer kit, asked to wear the pedometer for 7 consecutive days, log steps daily, then return the log by mail. Weighted medians and prevalence estimates were calculated. Trends were tested by χ2 test of independence.ResultsAn overall median of 10,935 steps/day was taken by Canadian children 5–19 years of age (n = 43,806) across the eight surveys. Steps/day increased between 2005–06 and 2007–08, then decreased in 2012–14. The prevalence of taking sufficient steps/day (defined as ≥ 10,000 steps/day for 5 year olds, ≥ 13,000 steps/day for 6–11 year-old boys; ≥ 11,000 steps/day for 6–11 year-old girls; and ≥ 10,000 steps/day for 12–19 year olds;) also increased then decreased over time, whereas the prevalence of accumulating < 7000 steps/day generally increased over time. Trends were significant for boys, girls and each age group.DiscussionThe CANPLAY surveillance system provided comparable data at multiple time points over 9 years. An overall shift in the distribution of steps/day towards a less active lifestyle occurred between 2005–06 and 2012–14 for boys, girls and each age group. This provides evidence that the national policy goal to increase children's steps/day by 2015 has not been met.