As concern over the rising number of children who are obese many researchers are trying to find ways to keep track of how active children really are. In one recent study done by the Mile End Center for Sports and Exercise in east London decided to attach pedometers to the children involved in the study.
The idea was to be able to gauge how active the children by automatically counting how many steps they walked and ran. In the beginning they were quite enthused by the results of the 200 hundred students involved in the study. That was until they discovered that the kids had found a unique way to cheat the test results.
It appears that a majority of the children were attaching the pedometers to their dog’s collars.
The pilot study in Whitechapel required 11 and 12-year-olds to clip a pedometer to their waists, with researchers at the centre collecting the readings by satellite.
“But after a week we found there were some kids who were extremely active but still obese,” said Professor Maffulli.
It was “not unheard of” for participants in previous studies to manipulate the readings of pedometers, he added.
Source: BBC News – Sly children fool exercise study
So much for the extremely active part.
