Parent and carer information on activity monitors
Activity Belts
As part of the measurements, your child will be given an activity belt to wear for 6 days. These belts are called Accelerometers and work a bit like a pedometer, except they can also record time. This allows us to record not only how much activity has occurred, but when it occurred during a day, and at what intensity.
Figure 1 below is an example of a graph produced from 1 day's accelerometer wear. As you can see, the levels of activity rise and fall during the day, with the largest peaks appearing to take place around 10.30am and 12.30pm, coinciding with break time and lunch time in this case.
Figure 1 - Representative graph for accelerometer wear
When the belt should be worn
Your child should wear their belt as much as possible from the day it is given out, to the day it is collected. They can wear their belt from the time they get up, until the time they go to bed for both weekdays and weekend days. Please encourage your child to wear their belt as much possible, the more they wear it, the better the information that we get from it.
When the belt should not be worn
There are three occasions when the belt should not be worn:
1. When your child goes to bed. There is no need to wear it in bed. It does no harm, but may not be very comfortable for them!
2. When getting wet. The accelerometers are not waterproof, therefore please remind your child to take it off while taking a bath or shower, or while swimming. The belts can be put back on as soon as they are dry.
3. When playing very rough contact sports or activities. The accelerometers should be worn for most sports, games and activities. It can be worn for hockey, football, gymnastics, netball, scooting, running, cycling and most of the things that a child does. There are some contact sports that involve quite rough contact, for example karate or rugby, and in these cases it may be sensible to take the belt off.
How the belt should be worn
The belt should be worn below the waist, so that the red box sits on your child’s right hip bone. There is a small black bump (looks like a button) on one side of the box, this black bump should always be facing upwards when the belt is in the correct position.
When the belt should be returned
The belt is returned to school on the seventh day (i.e. 6 days after it is handed out). For instance if your child was given their belt on a Tuesday, it will be collected on the following Monday. Your child’s teacher should remind your child the day before collection. You should also receive a note on the 1st day, reminding you when the accelerometer is due to be collected.
Late accelerometers
Sometimes children forget to bring the accelerometers in on the collection day. If this happens to your child, please help them to remember to bring it in the next day. Even though it is returned late, it still holds valuable data, therefore we really need to collect it back in as soon as possible.
In addition to the valuable data, the accelerometers themselves are expensive to buy. The units hold no value or practical use by themselves, as they only work when used in conjunction with a specialised computer programme. Lost accelerometers will have to be replaced in order to test other children; this is at huge cost to the project which is publicly funded. Can we please ask you to make your best efforts to ensure that all accelerometers are returned to the school, even if they are returned late.