Easton, S.C. and Ferrari, E.T. (2015) Children's Travel to School - the interaction of individual, neighbourhood and school factors. Transport Policy, 44. 9 - 18. ISSN 0967-070X
Abstract
The increase in average distance from home to secondary school over recent decades has been accompanied by a significant growth in the proportion of pupils travelling to school by motorized means as opposed to walking or cycling. More recently this switch in travel mode has received considerable attention as declining levels of physical activity, growing car dependence and the childhood obesity “crisis” have pushed concerns about the health of future generations up the public health agenda, particularly in the U.S., but also in the UK and Europe. This has led to a proliferation of international studies researching a variety of individual, school and spatial characteristics associated with children's active travel to school which has been targeted by some governments as a potential silver bullet to reverse the trend. However, to date national pupil census data, which comprises annual data on all English pupils, including a mode of travel to school variable, has been under-utilised in the analysis of how pupils commute to school. Furthermore, methodologically, the grouped nature of the data with pupils clustered within both schools and residential neighbourhoods has often been ignored-an omission which can have considerable consequences for the statistical estimation of the model. The research presented here seeks to address both of these points by analysing pupil census data on all 26,709 secondary pupils (aged 11–16) who attended schools in Sheffield, UK during the 2009–10. Individual pupil data is grouped within school, and neighbourhood, within a cross-classified multilevel model of active versus motorised modes of commuting to school. The results support the findings of other research that distance to school is key, but find that sociospatial clustering within neighbourhoods and schools are also critical. A further finding is that distance to school varies significantly by ethnicity, with white British pupils travelling the shortest distance of all ethnic groups. The implications of these findings for education and transport policy are discussed.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 Elsevier. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Transport Policy. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Travel to school; Active transport; Mode of travel; Multilevel model; Sociospatial; Secondary; Pupils; Motorised transport |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Health and Related Research (Sheffield) > ScHARR - Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Urban Studies & Planning (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 25 Sep 2015 15:33 |
Last Modified: | 03 Nov 2017 00:59 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.tranpol.2015.05.023 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:89021 |