Perceived neighbourhood safety moderates the relationship between active school travel and health-related quality of life

A systematic review on the relationship between the built environment and children's quality of life

BACKGROUND

Evidence of the effects of the built environment on children has mainly focused on disease outcomes; however, quality of life (QoL) has gained increasing attention as an important health and policy endpoint itself. Research on built environment effects on children's QoL could inform public health programs and urban planning and design.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to review and synthesize the evidence of the relationship between built environment features and children's QoL.

METHODS

Five research databases were searched for quantitative peer-reviewed studies on children between 2 and 18 years, published in English or German between January 2010 and August 2023. Only primary research was considered. Included studies (n = 17) were coded and methodologically assessed with the Joanna Briggs Critical Appraisal Checklists, and relevant data were extracted, analyzed, and synthesized, using the following built environment framework: (1) neighborhood green and blue space, (2) neighborhood infrastructure, and (3) neighborhood perception.

RESULTS

Green space was positively associated with children's QoL. Infrastructure yielded inconclusive results across all measured aspects. Overall neighborhood satisfaction was positively correlated with higher QoL but results on perceived environmental safety were mixed.

CONCLUSIONS

Most studies are correlational, making it difficult to infer causality. While the positive findings of green space on QoL are consistent, specific features of the built environment show inconsistent results. Overall perception of the built environment, such as neighborhood satisfaction, also shows more robust results compared to perceptions of specific features of the built environment. Due to the heterogeneity of both built environment and QoL measures, consistent measures of both concepts will help advance this area of research.

A systematic review on the relationship between the built environment and children's quality of life

Background

Evidence of the effects of the built environment on children has mainly focused on disease outcomes; however, quality of life (QoL) has gained increasing attention as an important health and policy endpoint itself. Research on built environment effects on children's QoL could inform public health programs and urban planning and design.

Objective

We aimed to review and synthesize the evidence of the relationship between built environment features and children's QoL.

Methods

Five research databases were searched for quantitative peer-reviewed studies on children between 2-18 years, published in English or German between 2010-2021. Only primary research was considered. Included studies (n=17) were coded and methodologically assessed with the Joanna Briggs Critical Appraisal Checklists, and relevant data were extracted, analyzed, and synthesized, using the following built environment thematic framework: 1) neighborhood natural environment, 2) neighborhood infrastructure, and 3) neighborhood perception.

Results

Green space was positively associated with children's QoL. Infrastructure yielded inconclusive results across all measured aspects. Overall neighborhood satisfaction was positively correlated with higher QoL but results on perceived environmental safety were mixed.

Conclusions

Most studies are correlational, making it difficult to infer causality. While the positive findings of green space on QoL are consistent, specific features of the built environment show inconsistent results. Overall perception of the built environment, such as neighborhood satisfaction, also shows more robust results compared to perceptions of specific features of the built environment. Due to the heterogeneity of both built environment and QoL measures, consistent definitions of both concepts will help advance this area of research.

The built environment impacts on route choice from home to school for rural students: A stated preference experiment

Introduction

Rural roads and built environment in China have been developed enormously, but it is not clear whether these roads fulfill the needs of school children as they need to travel long to school every day.

Objective

It is crucial to understand the influencing factors of their travel mode choices to better design future country roads and built environment, aiming to promote physical activities of school children in a safe built environment.

Method

This study thus attempts to explore the impacts of rural built environment attributes on children's school travel mode preferences. Eight rural built environment attributes are considered: distance from home to school; the number of intersections passed on the way to school; whether there are sidewalks/bicycle lanes; the traffic speed of school access routes; whether there are separation facilities between motor vehicles and non-motor vehicles; whether there are traffic lights and zebra crossings; availability of greenery such as lawns, flower ponds and street trees and whether there are shops on the way to school and at the school gate. Six hundred and thirty eight valid questionnaires were obtained through face-to-face interviews with school-age children in villages. A multinomial logit model was estimated to unravel the preferences and choices of rural school-age children in different models of school travel using the stated choice data.

Results

All the eight attributes have significant impacts on rural children's school travel choices on foot, bicycle, electric bicycle or motorbike. And four rural road design attributes have significant effects on rural children's school travel by private cars. A travel path with pavements or bike lanes, few intersections, low traffic speeds, greenery and shops can facilitate children's school travels on foot or by bike. The conclusions can provide reference for the further upgrading planning, designing and construction of rural roads, as well as enriching the theory and practice of child-friendly villages construction.

Coping with the unexpected: A job demands/resources study exploring Italian teachers’ remote working experience during the COVID‐19 lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic caused school systems to adapt very quickly to a variety of demands for change, and teachers, as frontline workers in the education system, were tasked with rapidly implementing new teaching practices in ways that promoted student learning while maximizing student safety. The aim of this study is to investigate how Italian teachers experienced the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, managing the difficult balance between job demands and personal resources to reduce the negative effects of this condition in terms of stress and burnout. Following the J-D/R model, the study analysed the role of personal resources, such as resilience and self-efficacy as components of Psychological Capital, in the relationship between job demands (work-life interface), job resources (principal's leadership support and participative decision-making), and emotional exhaustion. Participants were 606 Italian teachers working in different educational ranks. Results showed that personal resources play an important role to reduce the effects of job demands on emotional exhaustion and to buffer the effects of job resources on emotional exhaustion

The association of social capital with depression and quality of life in school-aged children

Social capital is an important factor that affects mental health. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between social capital and depression and between social capital and quality of life (QoL) in children in elementary and junior high school and to examine how this relationship differs in relevant patterns at both the individual- and school-level. The study was conducted in all elementary and junior high schools in a single municipality; the subjects consisted of 3,722 elementary school and 3,987 junior high school students (aged from 9 to 15). A multilevel linear mixed effect model analysis revealed that all three subscales of social capital were associated with depression and QoL at the individual-level: The school social capital at the individual-level showed the strongest association with depression and QoL. We also found that some of social capital at the school-level was associated with depression and QoL. An interactive effect was observed between educational stage (elementary and junior high) and some of social capital subscales. Specifically, the inverse association between school social capital and depression was stronger among the junior high students, while the positive association between school and neighborhood social capital and QoL was stronger among the elementary students. These interactions suggest that social capital impacts depression and QoL differently in elementary and junior high students. These findings suggest that the degree of association of social capital domains differs in mental health among the educational stage.