摘要：Objectives. We sought to determine the association between school- and neighborhood-level characteristics and physical activity among young people. Methods. We collected the data as part of Youth’07, a nationally representative survey of the health and well-being of high school students in New Zealand. In total, 9107 students from 96 schools participated (63% response rate). Students answered questions about their schools (e.g., support for physical activity) and neighborhoods (e.g., community cohesion, disintegration, safety, and recreational facilities). We created school-level measures by aggregating the students’ reports within their schools and we created neighborhood-level measures by aggregating the students’ reports of their neighborhoods to the census area unit of their residential address. We conducted analyses by using cross-classified random-effects models controlling for individual variables, with school and neighborhoods treated as random effects. Results. Schools characterized by high sports team participation and neighborhoods characterized by high social connections were positively associated with student physical activity. We observed few other significant characteristics of school and neighborhood environments. Conclusions. Our findings highlight that opportunity for sports participation and strong social connections in neighborhoods are particularly important for youths’ physical activity. Physical activity patterns among young people are influenced by factors at the individual, school, and community levels. At the individual level, physical activity participation is highest among males and younger adolescents, and socioeconomic differences are less consistently reported. 1 A body of research is emerging that demonstrates the role of schools in student physical activity patterns. Research has demonstrated the social environments and physical environments of schools to be associated with student physical activity behaviors. 2 , 3 Specifically, social environments of school (e.g., teacher support, 4 use of physical activity as a reward 5 ) and physical environments (e.g., number of recreational features, 6 accessibility of equipment outside school 5 ) are associated with physical activity participation among young people. Yet school-based interventions to increase physical activity among adolescents have demonstrated minimal effectiveness, except when they involve local communities. 7 Thus, there is growing interest and investment in research that aims to determine the influence of community-level factors on population physical activity. 2 , 8 Neighborhoods can influence the engagement in physical activity by their population through numerous mechanisms including interpersonal relationships (e.g., social supports), social inequalities (e.g., socioeconomic position), and neighborhood characteristics (e.g., cohesion, access to resources, walkability). 9 The relative importance of the influence of neighborhoods is often debated because adults easily move among neighborhoods for work, residence, and recreation, but young people may be more captive and susceptible to their neighborhood environments. Previous studies examining the relationships between neighborhoods and physical activity have been limited in methodology and measurement. For example, numerous studies have reported the association between perceived availability of recreational facilities and physical activity for young people. 10 – 13 When these studies are analyzed at the individual level, the major limitation is that young people who are more physically active may perceive more opportunities for physical activity in their environments than do those who are less active. More recently, researchers have improved on the measurement of the physical environment through use of geographic information systems to link objective measures of neighborhood resources. 14 , 15 Although this approach inherently yields more accurate measures of the neighborhood, 15 it assumes that all young people have equitable access to their neighborhoods and that their perceptions of their environments do not influence how they engage with them. For example, perceived safety of an environment may act as a barrier to physical activity, independent of what the actual reported safety indicators may be. 16 Therefore, reliance on objective measures of the physical environment may overlook significant features of the environment that influence how the population relates to it. Measuring the social contexts of young people and their neighborhoods is somewhat more difficult and cannot easily be achieved with objective measures. Thus, previous studies describing the influence of social contexts in youths’ physical activity have been predominantly operationalized at the level of the student, not the neighborhood. For example, several studies have found associations between peer engagement and parent support and engagement in physical activity with physical activity among young people. 17 – 19 Fewer studies have used appropriate multilevel statistical techniques to document the relationship between the community social context and youths’ physical activity. 2 Two studies 20 , 21 from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods used a multilevel approach and found that neighborhood-level safety and social cohesion are associated with physical activity among young people, but little is known about how generalizable these findings are outside Chicago and with different populations. Our aim, then, was to determine the influence of social and physical features of school and neighborhood environments on youths’ physical activity in a nationally representative sample of secondary school students in New Zealand. We sought to contribute to the growing literature on the topic by using multilevel statistical techniques to examine the associations between both social and physical attributes of schools and neighborhoods and youths’ physical activity in a nationally representative sample.
