Trial reportThe international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity2023
Play Active physical activity policy intervention and implementation support in early childhood education and care: results from a pragmatic cluster randomised trial.
Trial report in The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evidence on the Effectiveness of Public Policies for Physical Activity Promotion in the Early Childcare Education and Care Setting: A Systematic Review.Child: care, health and development · 2025Pooled it
- Trial
- Article
- Scalability and scaling-up strategy of a physical activity policy intervention in Australian childcare centres.Health promotion international · 2025Article
- Profile of the PLAY spaces & environments for children's physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep (PLAYCE) cohort study, Western Australia.Journal of activity, sedentary and sleep behaviors · 2025Article
- Assessing the implementation of healthy eating and physical activity policies and practices in Early Childhood Education and Care in New South Wales, Australia: A cross-sectional study.Health promotion journal of Australia : official journal of Australian Association of Health Promotion Professionals · 2025Article
- Opportunities for physical activity research in Puerto Rico: a review of the literature.Discover public health · 2025Review
- Assessing the Acceptability of a Preschool-Based Multi-Component Physical Activity Intervention Entitled "I'm an Active Hero" (IAAH): Process Evaluation of a Feasibility Trial.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Adaptations to scale-up an early childhood education and care physical activity intervention for real-world availability - Play Active.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPolicy interventions to increase physical activity in early childhood education and care (ECEC) services are effective in increasing physical activity among young children. However, a large proportion of ECEC services do not have nor implement a physical activity policy. Play Active is an evidence-informed physical activity policy intervention with implementation support strategies to enable ECEC services to successfully implement their policy. This study examined the effectiveness, implementation, and process outcomes of Play Active.
methodsA pragmatic cluster randomised trial in 81 ECEC services in Perth, Western Australia was conducted in 2021. Services implemented their physical activity policy over a minimum of three months. The effectiveness outcomes were changes in educator practices related to daily time provided for total physical activity and energetic play. Implementation outcomes included changes in director- and educator-reported uptake of policy practices and director-reported uptake of high impact and low effort policy practices. Process evaluation outcomes included awareness, fidelity, reach, and acceptability of the intervention and implementation strategies. Analysis involved descriptive statistics and generalised linear mixed effects models.
resultsThere was a significant increase in the uptake of director-reported policy practices (p = 0.034), but no change in the uptake of the subset of high impact and low effort policy practices. Intervention group educators reported high awareness of the Play Active policy recommendations (90%). Play Active acceptability was high among educators (83%) and directors (78%). Fidelity and reach were high for most implementation support strategies (> 75%). There were no significant changes in the amount of physical activity or energetic play educators provided to children or in the proportion of educators providing the policy recommended ≥ 180 min of physical activity/day or ≥ 30 min of energetic play/day for intervention compared to wait-listed comparison services.
conclusionsPlay Active resulted in significantly higher uptake of physical activity practices. However, there was no change in the amount of physical activity provided to children, which may be explained by the relatively short policy implementation period. Importantly, Play Active had high awareness, fidelity, reach, and acceptability. Future research should investigate the effectiveness of Play Active over longer implementation periods and its scalability potential.
trial registrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (reference number 12620001206910, registered 13/11/2020, https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=378304&isReview=true ).
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.