Evaluation of out-of-school-time-program frontline-staff compliance with physical activity promotion policy guidelines

Background: State and national policies specify the amount of physical activity (PA) children should accumulate while attending out-of-school-time-programs (i.e., summer day camps [SDCs] and afterschool programs [ASPs]). Evidence suggests such programs are failing to meet policy goals. A critical factor are frontline-staff and their corresponding PA promotion/prohibitive behaviors. In support, PA policies also endorse key behaviors frontline-staff should exhibit to create activity friendly environments. Little is known about the extent to which frontline-staff perform these behaviors.

Methods: System for Observing Staff Promotion of Activity and Nutrition (SOSPAN) was used to record frontline-staff PA promotion/prohibitive behaviors in 4 SDCs and 4 ASPs. SOSPAN captures frontline-staff behaviors aligned with PA policies in out-of-school-time-programs. The instrument consists of two categories related to PA: frontline-staff PA behaviors (e.g. frontline-staff engaged in PA with children, frontline-staff verbally discouraging PA) and frontline-staff management of PA (e.g. two or more PA options provided, elimination game).

Results: A total of 4,591 and 1,755 scans were completed over 27 and 28 days in SDCs and ASPs, respectively. Across settings, policy endorsed frontline-staff PA promotion behaviors occurred infrequently (e.g. frontline-staff were observed verbally promoting PA in 3.2-3.9% of scans during scheduled PA). Conversely, frontline-staff behaviors and management practices prohibiting PA were observed frequently (e.g. 17-24% of the scans included children waiting-in-line for a turn).

Conclusion: If frontline-staff are to play a meaningful role in promoting PA in the OSTP environment, programs need to provide competency based training in order to equip frontline-staff with these policy mandated skills.