Motor Skill, Waist Circumference and Children's Health-Related Quality of Life

Background/Purpose: Increasing physical activity is often proposed as a critical way to prevent childhood obesity and is an effective effort in enhancing individual’s health-related quality of life (HRQOL; USDHHS, 2010). Obesity in childhood is associated with greater impairments in HRQOL, and HRQOL is frequently worse for girls than boys (Swallen et al., 2005). It is generally recognized that motor skills are the basis for healthy weight and life-time physical activities, and should be promoted in the early childhood (Bonvin et al., 2012; Stodden et al., 2009). Despite growing concerns regarding increasing overweight and its likely effect on individual’s HRQOL (UI-Haq et al., 2013), little is known about the influences of motor skills on young children’s HRQOL. This study attempted to fill this research gap.

Method: This cross-sectional study included 262 healthy children (M age = 5.4; 125 girl, 137 boy; 32.1% non-Hispanic white, 18.1% non-Hispanic black, 47.2% Hispanic). Motor skill assessments, including dribbling, throwing, hopping and sliding, were scored by two well-trained research assistants using PE Metrics ^TM (NASPE, 2010). After motor skills assessment, waist circumference was also conducted by two research assistants. The children’s self-report pediatric QOL inventory short form (PedsQL ^TM 4.0; Varni et al., 2001) was used to assess children’s HRQOL, including physical, emotional, social, and school functioning.

Analysis/Results: There were statistically significant correlations between motor skill and emotional functioning and school functioning. Four functioning of HRQOL were related to one another (r range from .39 to .55). In this age group, boys reported somewhat higher HRQOL scores in four functioning than girls, but the differences between boys and girls did not reach statistical significance. Gender specific analyses indicated that motor skill was a significant predictor of physical, emotional, and school functioning among girls (β = .19, β = .21, β = .26, respectively; all p < .05). Among boys, waist circumference emerged as a negative predictor of social functioning of HRQOL (R² = 6.5%; β = -.23, p < .01).

Conclusions: The results suggested that developing motor skill competence may be fundamental in developing and maintaining better physical and psychosocial health into childhood. The findings add to the growing body of literature that motor skill should be considered as an important influence element of children’s HRQOL. From an applied perspective, intervention programs targeted developing motor skill competence within or after school are highly recommended in order to prevent children’s health at risk and/or childhood obesity.