“Eat well, move more, live longer” is an effective slogan for the public health campaign initiated and supported by the UK Department of Health, with the aim to encourage people to lead and live healthier lifestyles [1]. Eating healthy foods (five-a-day), as well as undertaking suitable physical exercise are the main key factors in reducing the risk of many chronic diseases [1]. According to World Health Organization (WHO) standards, the effinition of physical activity is any body movement produced by skeletal muscles that requires energy expenditure [2]. Exercise is a type of physical activity that can be described as planned and structured repetitive movements designed specifically to improve fitness and health, other daily activities such as walking, cycling, climbing stairs, gardening, commuting, and recreational activities are various ways of achieving physical fitness [3]. In contrast to physical activeness, physical inactivity results from a sedentary lifestyle and insufficient participation of activities that require body movement. Thus, the individual will be engaged in activities that involve less body movement, which in turn leads to lack of physical fitness. Similarly, frequent use of “passive” approaches of transport is associated with declining physical activity levels [2]. Physical inactivity is recognized as the fourth most common risk factor in overall mortality globally, which is an estimated 3.2 million deaths. This accounts for 6% of the world’s population [2], and high blood pressure (13%) is ranked first followed by tobacco smoking (9%), diabetes (6%), and then overweight or obesity (5%), which is fourth [2]. Physical inactivity poses as a major problem throughout the world, and organizations such as the WHO, Centre for disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and collaborating countries are therefore attempting to bring about changes in peoples’ lifestyle and introducing policies to make people physically active by combatting inactivity.

Several countries have examined the relationship between physical activity and the contributing general risk factors of activity. A recent study in Brazil found that higher income, industrialization, urbanization, and globalization have led to considerable economic and social change. Consequently, a rise in unhealthy diets and physical inactivity has developed and thus the prevalence of overweight among the population increased dramatically within the last three decades from 18.6% in 1974 to 50.1% in 2008 [4].

In the mid-1980s, the mean distance travelled to school by 11–16-year-olds in the UK was just over two miles; by 2013 this had almost doubled, increasing to 3.7 miles [5]. In recent studies, it has been estimated that less than half of all school-age children in England now attend their nearest school [6]. The proportion of children using active methods of traveling to school has become less common in recent years, with a higher proportion of journeys being undertaken by car [7].

Twenty-three years ago, Armstrong described the physical activity level of over 300 British youths aged 11 to 15 years as “children are fit, but not active” [8]. Current evidence suggests that today’s children are physically inactive and increasingly unfit [9]. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the contributing factors affecting the mode of travel to and from school for children in the UK through a cross-sectional study using a representative sample of youth population from the Understanding Society database.

The data was obtained from the well-known Understanding Society survey that was conducted in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The data include information about individuals’ lives, experiences, behaviours, and beliefs. Wave one was conducted in 2009–2010 and it focused on the 10–15-year-old age group. Demographic data, as well as other lifestyle variables, were included. The outcome variable here is the mode of travel to and from school, whether it is active using bicycles or walking or non-active using cars.

This novel study jointly used demographic and lifestyle factors to examine the potential effects on the mode of travel to and from school. Demographic factors include age, sex, ethnic groups (i.e. white and non-white), and regions where the children live at the time of interview; other lifestyle factors such as the type of eating habits, sporting activity, smoking status, social/cultural differences, and socio-demographics may influence the choice of travel mode by children. In this study, the generic term “children” refers to children and youth in the age range from 10 to 15 years old, and the generic term “travel to school” refers to travel to and from school.

The data from the first Wave of cross-sectional data from the Understanding Society was analyzed in this study and descriptive statistics for the data used are presented. Data cleaning for categorical predictor variables were re-grouped. Missing data in the main outcome were removed from the dataset, and the data then were ready for descriptive analysis for the main outcome in relation to different predictors by obtaining the p-value. Univariate analysis for individual predictor variables of the outcome was conducted using logistic regression analysis. The last form of analysis conducted was multivariate logistic regression analysis, controlling for the confounding variables.

All analyses were performed using the STATA crop College Station TX, USA (version 10.0) and data management was performed in Microsoft Office Excel, Redmond, WA, USA (2007). (Table. 1)

The active mode of travel was more prevalent in boys in the age group of 13–15 years old (see Tables 2 and 3). The results are similar to findings from previous researches [10-12]. This could be explained because boys might be bolder and are free to choose their travel mode more so than girls. As children tend to mature and grow older, they want to assert their independence by travelling to school on their own. In the UK, age defines the level of child education. Primary school age children (7–10 years old) are accompanied by their parents most of the time, and their mode of travel will depend on their parents’ attitude toward the way of commuting. This does not hold for secondary school children (11–16 years old) as they can pick the more convenient way of travel to their school. Additionally, parents may also wish to give their children some freedom or responsibility to travel to school on their own.

In a study by Davison, parents provided different forms of support including commuting to sporting activity venues, which was associated with a higher physical activity among girls who participated in organized sports, are more active than boys [13]. In children under the age of 5 years, being driven to school does not affect their overall physical activity [14]. In Glasgow, another study found that younger children are more likely to walk but also more likely to be driven than their older counterparts, while older children are more likely to take the bus than younger children [15].

The association between the active mode of travel and area of residence in our data show a statistically significant relationship. School children living in all regions within the UK except Scotland are less likely to travel actively compared to those living in London, and the observed inverse association is likely because of the discrepancy in the sample size between the respective areas and the reference region (London). Regions as a measure of active travel are not reflective at an individual level but rather at an ecologic level; therefore, this may explain our findings of a negative association with active travel modes. Additionally, our analysis does not account for distance or proximity between a participants’ home and school, which may be a factor that can elucidate such a relationship. For example, a previous study found that the distance from home to school represents the major reason why youth are commuting inactively and that an increase of one mile in distance significantly decreased the odds of active commuting by 71% [16]. The type of residential setting may also differ between urban and rural areas—secondary schools in a rural setting in the UK can be far away from children’s homes, which might explain why other regions in the UK use active travel less than in the London region. Additionally, the nature of this cross-sectional study examined the relationship between variables and resulting prevalence rates.

Physical activity acts as an essential vehicle for play and exercise, and the ability to learn physical and social skills, develop creative intelligence, and stimulate growth and fitness. However, there is a relatively small amount of evidence linking physical inactivity in children with childhood health outcomes compared with adults. Normal markers of morbidity and mortality related to lifestyle cannot be used as evidence by researchers. However, in children and adolescents with elevated levels of a variety of risk factors for diseases such as obesity, elevated blood pressure, adverse lipid profiles, or low bone mineral density, which can be used as evidence. Cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer require long incubation periods. Because of early and repeated exposure to risk factors during childhood and adolescence and throughout life, diseases related to lifestyle such as clinical hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, osteoporosis, or cardiovascular disease, rarely occur in children and adolescents. Additionally, measuring physical activity in children is more challenging compared with adults, and this produces weaker relationships [17].

The prevalence of active travellers corresponds to more than two-thirds of respondents in our study sample, among whom the prevalence of cycling is low (2.9%). Netherlands had reported the highest cycling prevalence (26%) followed by Denmark with 19% cyclists [18], while fewer than 1% of respondents were cyclists in the US overall in 2003

The present study showed that smoking was associated with active travel while another study found that active travel was inversely associated with smoking in boys but not girls in a small study of German 14-year-olds [19]. While two studies from Canada showed that smoking was inversely related to active travel in the larger [20], but not in the smaller study [21]. The most probable explanation is that older age group who travel actively in the UK try to experiment challenging behaviours with their peers.

Our study suggested that participating in a sporting activity more than 3 times a week is positively associated with active mode of travel. However, cycling was found to be associated with increased levels of physical activity among boys only, but physical activity was reduced among those who travelled to school by motor vehicle [22]. Similar findings were shown that a person who is actively commuting to school is more physically active than those who travel by motorized ways of transport [23].

This data is nationally representative source of information about UK population,, and it contains accurate data on participation in other types of physical activity.. The potential relationships between the active mode of travel and both socio-demographic characteristics and lifestyle factors have been established in this cross-sectional study. The analysis of youth data were adjusted by removing the confounding variables for demographic factors such as age, ethnicity, and region as well as lifestyle factors such as smoking status and eating habits.

However, respective regions were lower than for the reference group (i.e. London), due to lack of statistical power. Our results suggest that 13 to 15 year-olds are more likely to be active travellers, due to exposition either directly or inadvertently to many activities that encourage a healthy lifestyle and active travel. Sporting activity can act as important predictor for active school travel. Policy should help young children to discover a particular sporting activity of their interest.

Additionally, physical education can be promoted during Parent Teaching Association meetings through launching campaigns to spread the message for parents directly and to inform them of the importance of their child being physically active through sports participation, physical education and promotion of active travel to school.. Another implication of this study suggests that healthy eating habits such as consuming fast food once or less than per week are a predictor for active travel. The school curriculum should include the benefits of eating healthier food, which promote the physical and mental health, and the risk of eating fast food.