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. 2019 Nov 22;14(11):e0225220. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0225220

Are primary school children attending full-day school still engaged in sports clubs?

Sarah Spengler 1,*, Arvid Kuritz 2, Matthias Rabel 1, Filip Mess 1
Editor: David Meyre3
PMCID: PMC6874300  PMID: 31756210

Abstract

Purpose

Schools and organized sports both offer great chances to promote physical activity among children. Full-day schools particularly allow for extensive participation in extra-curricular physical activities. However, due to time reasons, full-day schools may also prevent children from engagement in organized sports outside school. There is only little national and international research addressing the possible competition of full-day schools and providers of organized sports outside school and the potential effects on children’s physical activity behavior. In Germany’s educational system, a transformation towards more full-day schools is currently taking place. The existence of both, half-day and full-day schools, gave occasion to the following research question: Do students attending half-day and full-day school differ with respect to a) sports club membership rate and b) weekly amount of sports club training?

Methods

Data were collected in eleven German primary schools. Selected schools offered both half-day and full-day (minimum three days/week with at least seven hours) care. 372 students’ data (grades 1–4; N = 153 half-day, N = 219 full-day; 47.4% male, 8.8±1.2y) were eligible for analyses. We assessed sports club membership and weekly training duration via questionnaire. Statistical analyses included Chi-square and Mann-Whitney-U-Tests.

Results

83% of half-day school students and 67% of full-day school students were sports club members (χ2(1) = 12.31, p<.001). Weekly duration of training in sports clubs among sports club members (N = 266) also differed between the groups (mdn = 150 min in half-day, mdn = 120 min in full-day school students; z = -2.37, p = .018). Additional analyses stratified for age and gender showed similar results.

Conclusion

Primary school students attending full-day schools engage less in organized sports outside school than half-day school students, regardless of age and gender. Future studies should examine if the detected lower engagement in sports club physical activity is compensated by physical activities in other settings such as school or non-organized leisure time.

Introduction

Already in childhood, physical activity is a key factor for health [1, 2]. Furthermore, studies show that physical activity behavior adopted in early life most often tracks into adulthood [3, 4]. Therefore, physical activity is promoted as part of a healthy lifestyle [5, 6]. Recommendations for physical activity behavior and its promotion further point to different settings in which children’s physical activity should take place, i.e. in the family context, at school and in leisure time (organized sports and free play) [6].

Especially in school, physical activity programs have the potential to reach all children regardless of their socioeconomic background. However, school systems differ between countries. In most countries primary school schedules encompass four to five curriculum-based lessons but schedules differ in terms of organization: E.g. in France, Spain and England children generally spend the full day at school. In Italy parents and children can choose between a half-day and a full-day schedule [7]. In Germany until recently, primary school education mostly took place in the mornings only. However, since 2003 optional full-day school offers were introduced and since then have expanded continuously [8]. Officially accredited full-day schools have to offer at least three days a week with a minimum of seven hours of care on each day (encompassing curricular and extra-curricular activities) [9]. Numbers of students attending full-day school in Germany are continuously rising with less than 10% in 2002 and 42.5% in 2016 [9, 10]. A further expansion of full-day schools is claimed and subsidized until 2021 [11].

In primary school students, in 2016, 40.1% participated in full-day school [9]. As a result, these children spend more time at school–time in which they take part in extra-curricular programs. More than 95% of the primary schools in Germany offering full-day care include voluntary physical activity-related programs in their extra-curricular programs [12–14]. Thus, children can potentially be physically active there. They have less free time out of school though which they could spend on leisure activities such as participating in organized sports.

Next to physical education and extra-curricular physical activities in school, participating in organized sports outside school is another important and suitable way for children to be physically active [6]. Participating in organized sports increases the chances of lifelong physical activeness due to the fact that membership can survive several life changes like finishing school or changing jobs. Furthermore, performance- and competition-oriented athletes find attracting offers in organized sports. Engagement in organized sports offers a chance for social learning and integration with regard to children’s development [15, 16]. Participating in organized sports is popular among children. International studies report participation rates between 36% and 66% [17–19]. However, providing institutions differ between countries. In Germany, sports clubs belong to the non-profit sector [15] and build the basis for mass sport provision [20]. Currently there are around 91,000 sports clubs which amounts to one-quarter of all third-sector organizations [21]. They are the main sports providers for the overall population in Germany. They offer affordable sports programs (monthly membership fee for children does not exceed 2.50€ in 50% of the sports clubs [22]) for competitive as well as recreational purposes [23]. German sports clubs are voluntary organizations with autonomous structures, focusing on their members’ interests. They follow democratic decision structures and rely on voluntary work [24]. The prevalence of sports club membership in children is comparatively high in Germany. In 2017, 65% of the six- to eleven-year-olds were member of a sports club [25]. Next to offering various sports programs, sports clubs pursue social tasks like educating tolerance and fair play, supporting sociability and integration [26]. Sports clubs are also seen as valuable to society due to their contribution to e.g. youth promotion, social integration, crime prevention and health [15]. Thus, again from a societal perspective, young people’s participation in sports clubs is desirable. However, membership rates decrease with children’s age [27, 28]. It seems especially crucial to recruit children at an early age aiming at creating a long-term commitment towards the club and by this also towards physical activity.

Both settings–school and organized sports–offer a great chance to promote physical activity in children. Longer school days in full-day schools and hence more possibilities to participate in extra-curricular physical activities can be beneficial for promoting physical activity especially in children who otherwise would not be committed to a sports club or another institution offering organized sports (e.g. children from difficult socioeconomic backgrounds [25, 29]). However, there is also the possibility that children attending full-day school will not engage in organized sports outside school due to a (perceived) lack of time or clash of dates. German sports clubs for example currently struggle to recruit members and volunteers and further fear to loose potential members and volunteers due to the expansion of full-day schools [15]. Consequently, a significantly increasing number of sports clubs started to cooperate with full-day schools (35% in 2014) [26].

From a health perspective, knowing the impact of full-day school on overall physical activity behavior in children is crucial. Furthermore, certainty about the impact of full-day school on engagement in organized sports would form the basis for developing innovative cooperation strategies that motivate children to engage in organized sports. There is only little research concerning the possible competition of full-day schools and providers of organized sports and the potential effects on children’s physical activity behavior. Some studies compare physical activity levels between in-school and off-school hours (e. g. [30–34]), indicating that physical activity levels are lower in school than outside school. An Italian study [35] finds that full-day school students spend a higher percentage of time with moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in the afternoon timeslot than half-day school students (18% vs. 15% of MVPA). No differences are present in the morning and evening timeslots. Züchner and Arnold [36] find that sports club membership rates in German secondary school students who attend full-day school at least at two days a week are lower than in students attending half-day school only. Further, they find that in 7th and 9th graders the frequency of training in a sports club is lower in full-day school students. On the contrary, in another German study secondary school students attending full-day school offers obtain higher sports clubs membership rates than their counterparts attending half-day school only [37]. In summary, studies on the relationship of full-day school attendance and overall physical activity behavior of students are rare and results are heterogeneous. Particularly with regard to primary school students as well as to participation in organized sports there is a lack of knowledge to date.

The ongoing change in the German educational system and the existence of both half-day and full-day schools constitutes a beneficial occasion to gain more insight into this field. Due to the detected desiderata, this study aims to answer the following research question: Does habitual sports club participation differ between children attending half-day and full-day school with respect to a) sports club membership rate and b) weekly amount of sports club training?

Methods

Study design

The survey was conducted in eleven German primary schools in Baden-Württemberg between May and July 2017. Selected schools were officially registered and accredited as full-day school and installed an optional full-day school branch in the school year 2016/2017. Eleven out of 25 invited schools (44%) agreed to participate in the study. All students of grade 1 to grade 4 were invited to take part, regardless of their affiliation to full-day or half-day school. To collect data on students’ physical activity behavior in different settings, they were asked to fill out a paper-pencil questionnaire [38] together with their parents.

Parents of each participant gave informed written consent before enrolling in the study. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Konstanz, Germany and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Measurements

Sex, age and attendance of half- and full-day school

Sex as well as date of birth was assessed via questionnaire and age was calculated. Two age groups were built by using the median age (8.79 years) as cut off for dividing the sample.

Within the questionnaire participants were asked if they were registered for full-day school (i.e. these children spend at least seven hours a day at three days a week in school, according to the accreditation requirements). If they were not registered, they were further asked if they nevertheless attended full-day school offers. For both groups (registered and non-registered), time spent at full-day school offers was assessed for each day during the week of the assessment. Participants wrote down the exact time when they left school at each day they attended full-day school offers. Participants were divided into two groups regarding their program: Full-day and half-day group. All children that were registered for full-day school were allocated to the full-day group. Children who answered that they were not registered and neither attended full-day offers were allocated to the half-day group. Children who were not registered for full-day school but attended full-day offers which cover–in combination with regular lessons–at least three days with a minimum of seven hours at school were also allocated to the full-day group. This cut-off-point is in accord with the requirements to be accredited and financially supported as full-day school in Germany. Children who attended lower amounts of full-day school offers were not included in the analyses.

Habitual sports club participation

Habitual sports club participation was assessed using the scale from the MoMo Physical activity questionnaire (wave 2) [38]. Sports club participation in Germany standardly includes regular training sessions, commonly on a weekly basis throughout the whole year. Performing sports in a sports club can therefore be seen as a habitual physical activity with fixed weekly practices that take place throughout the whole year. Exceptions can be seasonal sports, e.g. skiing. Participants were asked if they are member of at least one sports club. Further, they were asked how much and which physical activity they exert in sports clubs. The questionnaire included questions considering type (which sport) of their physical activity, weekly duration (in minutes) of each performed sport and months in which each sport was performed throughout the year (to detect seasonal activities). Participants could report data for maximal four different types of sport in sports clubs. From these data, a sum score was calculated reflecting the duration of performed physical activity in sports clubs per week. The scale assessing sports club participation was checked in relation to reliability (kappa = .81) and validity (correlations between scale and Actigraph GT1M: r = 0.35) [39]. However, this validation is based on data of adolescents aged 11 to 17 years and on a former version of the scale. The scale used here reflects an optimized version (with slight modifications) published by the authors of the MoMo Study [38].

Participants

Out of 1,620 invited students, 518 (32.0%) agreed to participate in the study. 450 participants filled out the questionnaire (46.8% male, mean age 8.8±1.2y). Fig 1 shows how the final sample size was achieved. Table 1 displays the final sample sizes for the analyses of each part of the research question and shows the students’ distribution in grades 1 to 4.

Fig 1. Flow chart of the sample selection process.

Fig 1

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Bold frames indicate final sample sizes for the statistical analyses.

Table 1. Sample sizes.

Sports club membership (N) Habitual PA in sports clubs (N)
Grade 1 45 (m) / 35 (f) 33 (m) / 26 (f)
Grade 2 29 (m) / 55 (f) 23 (m) / 35 (f)
Grade 3 53 (m) / 42 (f) 44 (m) / 30 (f)
Grade 4 27 (m) / 40 (f) 18 (m) / 23 (f)
Inter-grade or no information about gradea 23 (m) / 23 (f) 17 (m) / 17 (f)
Average age 8.8±1.2 (m) / 8.7±1.2 (f) 8.8 ±1.1 (m) / 8.6±1.1 (f)
Total 372 266
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a These students attended an inter-grade class (different combinations: grades 1 and 3; 2 and 4; 1 and 2; 3 and 4); 3 students (100% male) did not mention their grade in the questionnaire.

Statistics

All statistical tests were performed in SPSS statistical software for Windows (release 23.0; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Pearson’s chi-square test of independence was used to identify differences in sports club membership rate between groups. Mann-Whitney-U tests were performed to compare weekly duration of training in sports clubs between groups. The significance level for all statistical tests was set a priori to α≤.05.

Results

Membership rates in sports clubs differed significantly between students attending half-day and full-day school (Fig 2). 83% of the students attending half-day school were member in a sports club compared to 67% of the students attending full-day school (χ2(1) = 12.31, p<.001). Additional analyses stratified for students’ gender and age showed similar patterns for boys and girls as well as for younger and older students: Regarding boys, 90.8% (half-day) and 71.4% (full-day) were member of a sports club (χ2(1) = 9.13, p = .003) Regarding girls, 77.3% (half-day) and 61.7% (full-day) were member of a sports club (χ2(1) = 5.46, p = .019). Further, 85.1% of younger students attending half-day school and 66.4% of younger students attending full-day school were sports club members (χ2(1) = 8.03, p = .005). In older students, 80.8% (half-day) and 67.0% (full-day) were member of a sports club (χ2(1) = 4.17, p = .041).

Fig 2. Sports club membership rates overall and stratified for gender and age group (N = 372).

Fig 2

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* indicates a statistically significant difference on the alpha-level α≤.05.

Including only sports club members (N = 266, Fig 3), our analyses showed a significant difference in weekly duration of training in sports clubs with a median of 150 min for students attending half-day school and a median of 120 min for students attending full-day school (z = -2.37, p = .018, r = .15). Stratified additional analyses for boys revealed no significant difference with medians of 150 min (half-day) and 165 min (full-day, z = -.28, p = .821, r = .02). Duration of training among girls differed significantly with medians of 135 min (half-day) and 90 min (full-day, z = -3.51, p<.001, r = .31). In the younger age group, duration of training was also significantly higher for half-day school students (mdn = 120 min) than for full-day school students (mdn = 97.5 min, z = -2.11, p = .035, r = .18). In the older age group, differences were not significant but medians were 180 min for half-day school students and 120 min for full-day school students (z = -1.15, p = .249, r = 0,10).

Fig 3. Duration of training in sports clubs per week (Mdn) overall and stratified for gender and age group (N = 266).

Fig 3

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The boxplots display the median and the 2nd and 3rd quartile. * indicates a statistically significant difference on the alpha-level α≤.05.

Discussion

This study aimed to identify potential differences in participation in organized sports (i.e. sports clubs) between primary school students attending half-day or full-day school. We found that full-day school students were less engaged in sports clubs. This holds true for boys and girls as well as younger and older students.

Our result that boys were more often member of a sports club than girls, is in line with other studies in this field [15, 27, 40]. Our results further confirm findings that membership rates decline with children’s age [27, 28], as the prevalence was already lower in the older age group. Interestingly, overall membership rates in our study were higher than reported in other national studies [25, 27]. One possible explanation could be the fact that the participating schools in our study are located in well situated areas of Southern Germany (Baden-Württemberg) with a relatively high mean net equivalent income [41]. The proportion of people with a medium or high socioeconomic status (SES) therefore might be relatively high in our sample. It is shown that children from difficult socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be less engaged in organized sports [25, 29, 42, 43]. These children were potentially underrepresented in our sample.

Our results indicate that participating in full-day school prevents some children from engaging in organized sports outside school. One reason could be that these children already attend extra-curricular physical activity programs at school and therefore do not want to engage in further organized physical activity offers. Another reason might be a lack of time due to the longer school day. It can be assumed that these children or their parents are not willing to realize further binding activities during the week in addition to the fixed full-day schedules. There is also the possibility that a clash of dates prevents these children from engaging in a sports club [37], as especially in young children sports club training often takes place in the afternoon. Similar results are found in secondary school students [36], with full-day school students obtaining lower membership rates in sports clubs though with smaller differences between the groups. One reason might be that sports clubs offers for older children and adolescents usually take place in the evening and therefore do not overlap with full-day school schedules. Furthermore, students’ age could be a relevant factor with younger children being more protected by their parents from having huge amounts of bonded time, especially with regard to the fact that younger children are more likely to engage in free play [25]. This assumption holds also true for our results with a slightly greater difference in sports club membership prevalence between full-day and half-day school students in the younger age group. Heim and colleagues’ [37] contradictory results might be due to the fact that in their study students were allocated to the full-day group even if they attended full-day school only one day per week, which in consequence might not affect their engagement in sports clubs.

Even if full-day school students decide to participate in sports club physical activity they spend a lower amount of weekly time exercising. Possible reasons might be similar to the reasons mentioned before: Attended physical activity programs already at school, a clash of dates and the desire not to have too many fixed appointments during the week. Again, Züchner and Arnoldt [36] show similar results for 7th and 9th graders, with full-day school students participating in less weekly training sessions than half-day school students. However, we found such results in girls but not in boys and assume that if boys decide to participate in organized sports, the performance motivation is more prevalent than in girls and hence they participate more frequently. Studies on motivation towards sports support this assumption, as it is shown that for boys performance is an important motivator for engaging in sports and physical exercise [44]. The fact that the weekly amount of training in our study was lower in girls and in addition the variance was quite low compared to boys, indicates that in female full-day school students the pattern of engaging in sports clubs in a manageable timeframe is typical. A similar picture was found in younger students. It seems as if especially young kids as well as girls might be less willing and/or be more protected by their parents from having several fixed appointments and liabilities. A recent study from 2017 supports this assumption with regard to age differences showing that younger children (six to seven years) participate less also in other (not physical activity-related) clubs and extra-curricular groups than eight to eleven year-olds (68% vs. 80%), but engage more often in free play at home [25].

In summary, students attending full-day school engage less in sports clubs both with regard to membership rate and weekly duration of training. Sports clubs quite often cooperate with schools with the aim of recruiting members [13] but this does not seem to fully compensate the potential loss of members due to full-day school. However, type and amount of cooperation between sports clubs and schools are diverse [45]. Cooperation could include constant engagement in the full-day extra-curricular program or only one-time events to inform students about the offers of the respective club. Studies show that between 30% and 80% (depending on the studied region and schools) of the extra-curricular physical activity programs in full-day school are organized and held by sports clubs [13, 45]. However, only a small number of sports clubs (between 5% and 24%, depending on the studied region) cooperates with full-day schools in terms of extra-curricular physical activity programs [45]. Possibly the participation in physical activity programs at school (organized by other providers than sports clubs) might prevent students from engaging in sports clubs–and maybe also from engaging in leisure time physical activity in general. This assumption is supported by a study on sports schools (with compulsory physical education on each school day) which shows that primary school students attending sports schools are more active at school but less active in leisure time than students from regular schools, resulting in similar overall activity levels [46]. Hence, from a sports club perspective, it could be beneficial to expand the cooperation between sports clubs and full-day schools, both in terms of quantity and intensity.

From a health perspective, it is possible that children compensate the lower amount of physical activity, which might result from fewer engagement in sports clubs [47]. A potential compensation can be realized in several settings. One could be full-day school itself. Participation in extra-curricular programs including physical activity could compensate the lower engagement in sports club. In German schools, more than half of the full-day school students participate in extra-curricular physical activity programs [37, 48]. Pau et al.’s study supports this idea showing that in the afternoon timeslot percentage of MVPA is higher in full-day school students than in half-day school students [35]. The authors further hypothesize that this might result from a one-hour recess in the afternoon in which primary school students accumulate MVPA. Other studies also show that recess time is an important contributor to MVPA [49, 50]. Another possibility to compensate lower engagement in organized sports is being physically active in free leisure time (e.g. active outdoor play), whereby Pau et al. don’t find differences in leisure time physical activity levels between half-day and full-day school students, however [35]. Both, being physically active in recess as well as in leisure time, though happens unorganized and unregularly. Therefore physical activity levels might be lower than in organized sports clubs programs, which are held by an educated trainer and take place regularly at least once a week (independent from e.g. weather and other external as well as internal barriers). Due to a lack of studies on this topic, these considerations must be examined by future scientific studies analyzing not only the quantity of children’s physical activity behavior, but also the respective settings where physical activity is accumulated.

This is the first study addressing the potential competition of full-day schools and organized sports considering primary school children. However, some limitations must be considered when interpreting the findings. First, this study was based on regional data which might not be representative–neither for Germany nor for the state of Baden-Württemberg–due to regional differences, e.g. SES of the inhabitants, school size as well as a particular structure of sports clubs in the different communities and towns where the schools are located [25, 41]. Second, we did not assess SES of the students and therefore cannot fully preclude that SES was a confounder in our study. Indeed, sports club membership is significantly lower in children and adolescents with a lower SES– 42.8% (low), 61.0% (medium) and 74.1% (high) [43]. However, a representative study on full-day school attendance in (western) German primary schools shows that the distribution of children from low, medium and high SES does not significantly differ between full-day and half-day schools [51]. Thus, we can assume that our full-day and half-day samples are similar regarding their SES distribution. Third, as data was assessed via questionnaire, statements on physical activity behavior can be affected by the difficulty to recall the duration of activities and summarizing as well as rounding this information. Questionnaire data was used because it delivers information not only with respect to the quantity of physical activity but also with respect to the setting in which the activity takes place.

Conclusions

This study showed that primary school students attending full-day school engage less in organized sports outside school than half-day school students. Future studies should examine if the lower engagement in physical activity in sports clubs is compensated in other settings like school or leisure time outside sports clubs. Sports clubs could intensify the cooperation with schools in order to recruit long-term members and thus minimize the loss of members due to full-day school. This is especially important as engagement in sports clubs can continue even after graduation and thus contributes to continuous physical activity in adolescents and young adults.

Supporting information

S1 File. Study dataset.

(XLSX)

Click here for additional data file. (33.6KB, xlsx)

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Melina Schnitzius (Technical University of Munich, Germany) for copy editing the manuscript.

Data Availability

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Funding Statement

This study was supported by funding from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports Baden-Wuerttemberg, https://km-bw.de/Lde/Startseite. This work was also supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Technical University of Munich within the funding program Open Access Publishing. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Decision Letter 0

David Meyre

30 Aug 2019

PONE-D-19-19689

Are primary school children attending full-day school still engaged in sports clubs?

PLOS ONE

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Reviewer #1: Review of Manuscript: Are primary school children attending full-day school still engaged in sports clubs?

This paper represents an account of how many primary-school age students participate in organized sports in sports clubs in Germany, and whether this differs based on their enrollment in full-day or half-day school programs. Furthermore, it also investigates whether those that are members of sports clubs engage more or less depending on their allocation to full- or half-day school.

While this paper is informative of the simple research question it set out to answer, I am not sure it is rigorous enough to warrant publication at this time. Major issues here are the inability to account for confounding factors, that they identify and discuss in the discussion. For example, they did not measure leisure time PA or PA/sport participation in school. They did not record or account for social-economic status and how this may affect sports club participation (presumably it costs money to belong to a sports club – this is a big confounder). Although they do state that this is a more affluent area of Germany, it is still important missing data. These omissions represent large flaws in the data analysis, and I am not sure how the researchers can address them if they did not collect these data (except for discussing their theoretical influence - which they have. I am just not sure this is enough).

Other areas to consider fixing:

1) The introduction is too long (4.5 pages). Should be cut in half and focused on the most important information.

2) First sentence of 2nd paragraph… “physical activity has the potential…” (or offers…)

3) The timeframe of data collection is very short. Or maybe I am misunderstanding… perhaps more details on the questions they were asked in the questionnaire is warranted. What period of time were they asked to evaluate? Sports club participation just from May to July, or over the year? In the last 6 months? Please add more details here. Perhaps the seasons/weather etc. makes a difference? I see that this was mentioned, but more details here would be helpful.

4) Is 11 schools representative?

5) Are the sports clubs in close proximity to the schools? Easy to get to? Are there other structural barriers?

6) Participants: should be 1620 or 1,620 not 1.620 (and elsewhere in the paper).

7) Statistics, should be α≤.05

8) Consider reporting statistics on the figures (as stars, etc.) and in the figure legends so that the figures stand alone.

9) Figure 2, I think the y-axis should be min/week.

10) Would be beneficial to better describe the families demographically in terms of the groups. i.e. stats between the full vs. half day school families? (income, # of children, etc.).

11) Would be a good idea, early on, do thoroughly define what a “sports club” in Germany is? International readers may be thinking different things. Is it like a community centre? A private club? A country club? Etc.

12) Several typographical and grammatical errors. Would benefit from additional proofreading.

Reviewer #2: The study by Sarah Spengler explored whether primary school children attending full-day schools still engaged in sports clubs. The topic is interesting and seems important in Germany, as number of children attending full-day schools has increased with high speed. However, there are some consideration as follows;

(1) The conception of “sports club” is ambiguous. Does it mean all kinds of sports club or out-school sports club? It seems that only out school sports club is the object, but it needs to be clarified in study purpose.

(2) Why is out-school sports club so important for children’s early development? Besides a few sentences in introduction, the lack of statistical analysis and in-depth discussion made the argument unconvinced to readers.

(3) There were too more unnecessary descriptions in Introduction and Discussion, but not enough content of results. I suggest the authors 1) reword the Introduction carefully, conclude the past studies with highly condensed sentences and directly bring up the importance of the present study. 2) make more statistical analysis to expand the present results. 3) try to avoid duplications of results in Discussion, state the principle finding of the study only, make more in-depth discussion about how the present study relates to past studies and how the present study adds new views to the thesis.

For example, the great length is used to indicate those missing numbers of each LS7 component from line 1 to line 17 on page 9. These should be detailed using a flow chat.

(4) The symbol within numbers should be “,” instead of “.”.

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

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PLoS One. 2019 Nov 22;14(11):e0225220. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0225220.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

14 Oct 2019

We would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments and the opportunity to improve our manuscript. We believe that the quality of our manuscript has substantially improved by implementing the suggestions and comments received. Please find our response to the reviewers’ comments below. The reviewers’ comments are shown in quotation marks, and our responses are shown below each comment. We hope we have addressed all the reviewers’ concerns and comments to their satisfaction.

Review Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1

“This paper represents an account of how many primary-school age students participate in organized sports in sports clubs in Germany, and whether this differs based on their enrollment in full-day or half-day school programs. Furthermore, it also investigates whether those that are members of sports clubs engage more or less depending on their allocation to full- or half-day school.

While this paper is informative of the simple research question it set out to answer, I am not sure it is rigorous enough to warrant publication at this time. Major issues here are the inability to account for confounding factors, that they identify and discuss in the discussion. For example, they did not measure leisure time PA or PA/sport participation in school. They did not record or account for social-economic status and how this may affect sports club participation (presumably it costs money to belong to a sports club – this is a big confounder). Although they do state that this is a more affluent area of Germany, it is still important missing data. These omissions represent large flaws in the data analysis, and I am not sure how the researchers can address them if they did not collect these data (except for discussing their theoretical influence - which they have. I am just not sure this is enough).”

Thank you for highlighting the paper’s limitations – we totally understand your comment. We acknowledge the fact that it would be highly interesting to find out if the full-day students compensate their lower sports clubs engagement in other PA settings. However, sports clubs are by far the main providers of physical activity offers in Germany (also see our revision regarding information on function and value of sports clubs in Germany in the introduction). Hence, we consider the findings of this paper as relevant and noteworthy on their own as they directly affect sports clubs’ recruitment of new members and sports clubs’ success. Nevertheless, further research should aim to answer the question if full-day school students’ lower engagement in sports clubs might be compensated by physical activity in other settings. This is especially important from a health perspective.

Further, we want to address the mentioned concerns regarding socio-economic status (SES) and how it may affect sports club membership: Indeed, sports club membership is significantly lower in children and adolescents with a lower SES – 42.8% (low), 61.0% (medium) and 74.1% (high) . However, a representative study examining full-day school participation in German primary schools shows that the distribution of children from a low, medium and high SES does not significantly differ between full-day and half-day schools. Thus, we can assume that our full-day and half-day samples are similar regarding their SES distribution. Therefore SES does not seem to be a confounder with respect to our research question. We hope that we explained these circumstances to your satisfaction and included this valuable information in our manuscript.

“Other areas to consider fixing:

1) The introduction is too long (4.5 pages). Should be cut in half and focused on the most important information.”

Thank you very much for this comment. We shortened the introduction focusing on the most important information.

“2) First sentence of 2nd paragraph… “physical activity has the potential…” (or offers…)”

Thank you for this comment. We agree that the sentence includes misleading wording and reworded it.

“3) The timeframe of data collection is very short. Or maybe I am misunderstanding… perhaps more details on the questions they were asked in the questionnaire is warranted. What period of time were they asked to evaluate? Sports club participation just from May to July, or over the year? In the last 6 months? Please add more details here. Perhaps the seasons/weather etc. makes a difference? I see that this was mentioned, but more details here would be helpful.”

Thank you for this comment. We revised the part on data collection timeframe as well as on how we assessed habitual sports club participation to resolve this issue. Furthermore, also referring to one of your later comments, we added information on the tradition of sports clubs in Germany in the introduction, which may also help to understand the issue.

Sports club participation in Germany standardly includes regular training sessions, commonly on a weekly basis throughout the whole year. Performing sports in a sports club can therefore be seen as habitual physical activity with fixed weekly practices that takes place throughout the whole year. Exceptions can be seasonal sports, e.g. skiing.

Therefore the questionnaire gathers habitual sports club participation by assessing the duration of training sessions per week. To detect seasonal activities the students were also asked to sign the months (Jan to Dec) in which the training sessions take place. Hence, the questions refer to the whole year.

Data collection took place between May and July 2017. Within this timeframe we visited the schools to conduct the survey.

“4) Is 11 schools representative?”

Thank you for this comment. As mentioned in the limitations section, our data is not representative. The study was based on regional data, which might not be representative due to regional differences, e.g. regarding SES of the inhabitants as well as a diverse range of sport activities in sports clubs. We added more information to further clarify the issue in the limitations section of the manuscript’s revised version.

“5) Are the sports clubs in close proximity to the schools? Easy to get to? Are there other structural barriers?”

Thank you for this remark. We agree that knowing these facts is important to better understand the paper: In Germany, there are currently around 91,000 sports clubs (and 15,000 primary schools) with many of them offering different types of sports to their members. Almost every small village has at least one sports club and children’s membership fees usually do not exceed 3€ per month. Thus, structural as well as financial barriers are rather small.

“6) Participants: should be 1620 or 1,620 not 1.620 (and elsewhere in the paper).”

Please excuse this mistake. We resolved it.

“7) Statistics, should be α≤.05”

Please excuse this mistake. We resolved it.

“8) Consider reporting statistics on the figures (as stars, etc.) and in the figure legends so that the figures stand alone.”

Thank you for this suggestion, which we happily implemented.

“9) Figure 2, I think the y-axis should be min/week.”

Thank you for this remark. We revised it as suggested.

“10) Would be beneficial to better describe the families demographically in terms of the groups. i.e. stats between the full vs. half day school families? (income, # of children, etc.).”

Thank you for this suggestion. Unfortunately, we did not have the permission to assess data on the families’ demographic data. However, as mentioned in our answer to your first comment, a representative study examining full-day school participation in German primary schools shows that the distribution of children from low, medium and high SES does not significantly differ between full-day and half-day schools, neither does the number of children. Thus, we can assume that our full-day and half-day samples are similar regarding their SES distribution. We also included this information in our paper.

“11) Would be a good idea, early on, do thoroughly define what a “sports club” in Germany is? International readers may be thinking different things. Is it like a community centre? A private club? A country club? Etc.”

Thank you for this important suggestion. We agree that a comprehensive understanding on the tradition and function of sports clubs in Germany is necessary to interpret the study’s findings as well as to understand the relevance of the paper. Therefore, we included a description of German sports clubs in the introduction.

“12) Several typographical and grammatical errors. Would benefit from additional proofreading.”

Thank you for your feedback. We edited the manuscript.

Reviewer #2:

“The study by Sarah Spengler explored whether primary school children attending full-day schools still engaged in sports clubs. The topic is interesting and seems important in Germany, as number of children attending full-day schools has increased with high speed. However, there are some consideration as follows;

(1) The conception of “sports club” is ambiguous. Does it mean all kinds of sports club or out-school sports club? It seems that only out school sports club is the object, but it needs to be clarified in study purpose.”

Thank you very much for this comment. Sports clubs in Germany describe organizations outside school. We agree that a comprehensive understanding on the tradition and function of sports clubs in Germany is necessary to interpret the study’s findings as well as to understand the relevance of the paper. Therefore, we included a description of the conception of German sports clubs in the introduction.

“(2) Why is out-school sports club so important for children’s early development? Besides a few sentences in introduction, the lack of statistical analysis and in-depth discussion made the argument unconvinced to readers.”

Thank you for this important remark. We added a more in-depth explanation of sports clubs in Germany, including their tradition and their relevance, in the introduction. We hope that this strengthens our argumentation.

“(3) There were too more unnecessary descriptions in Introduction and Discussion, but not enough content of results. I suggest the authors 1) reword the Introduction carefully, conclude the past studies with highly condensed sentences and directly bring up the importance of the present study. 2) make more statistical analysis to expand the present results. 3) try to avoid duplications of results in Discussion, state the principle finding of the study only, make more in-depth discussion about how the present study relates to past studies and how the present study adds new views to the thesis. For example, the great length is used to indicate those missing numbers of each LS7 component from line 1 to line 17 on page 9. These should be detailed using a flow chat.”

Thank you very much for these remarks. As proposed, we condensed the introduction. Further, we revised the discussion avoiding duplications and focused on relations to past studies and our study’s implications.

Unfortunately, we could not identify matching content to the remark “the great length is used to indicate those missing numbers of each LS7 component from line 1 to line 17 on page 9” at the given page. Maybe the reviewer’s version of the manuscript had different page and line numbers than ours. We suppose that the comment refers to the explanation in the methods section on how we reached the final sample size. We therefore changed this part as suggested by including a flow chart and shortening the text.

We also want to reply to the suggestion to “make more statistical analysis to expand the results”. We analyzed if half-day and full-day school students differ in terms of sports club membership and training duration and stratified the analyses for age and gender. We agree that it would be of interest to analyze further variables next to age and gender regarding their potential confounding effects. Unfortunately, as we pointed out in the limitations paragraph, we do not have the data to conduct these analyses. We addressed this problem by referring to a study showing that SES had no effect on full-day or half-day school membership. Nevertheless, we believe that we were able to answer our research question with the conducted statistical analyses. Furthermore, the multiplication of statistical models generates alpha risk inflation. Our study is one of the first to analyze the impact of full-day school on sports club participation, using well pheno-typed data and therefore adds important knowledge on this topic. In our view, this study can be seen as a first explorative step towards understanding the impact of a long(er) school day on children’s physical activity behavior.

“(4) The symbol within numbers should be “,” instead of “.”.”

Please excuse this mistake. We resolved it.

Reviewer #null:

“1) Introduction. Comprehensive “

Thank you.

“2) Methods

a) Sample. Not respresentative of the schoolds in the city (44% schools accepted). Please comment.”

As already stated in the limitations section, we agree that our data is not representative. We added another explanatory sentence in the limitations section to further clarify the issue.

“b) Use of MoMo questionnaire to assess sport’s club participatio:

This questionnaire was validated at older ages, than the ones studied in the manucript.

Authors shoud comment on this aspect, as studying younger ages may compromise the quality of the report.

On the other hand, the validity found fro this questionnaire is low (0.33)”

We totally agree that the validity of the questionnaire is low (correlations between scale and Actigraph GT1M: r=0.35). However, these results were similar to those of other questionnaires measuring physical activity in children and adolescents . Statements in questionnaires on physical activity can be affected by the difficulty to recall the duration of activities and to summarize as well as round this information. Choosing questionnaires to collect data was predetermined by our aim to get information on habitual physical activity exclusively in the sports club setting which would not have been measureable via accelerometer.

Further, we acknowledge the fact that the questionnaire was validated with older participants and thus our results must be interpreted with care. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, there does not exist another tool, which is able to measure habitual sports clubs participation in such detail. The MoMo questionnaire is a widely used and accepted tool in German literature and is also used in nation-wide longitudinal representative studies on physical activity behavior of primary school-aged children , .

“3) Results

a) Please indicate what d you refer as “younger ages”

Thank you for this comment. As stated in the methods section, two age groups were built by using the median age as cut off for dividing the sample. Thus, the younger age group includes children younger than 8.79 years. We included this information in the manuscript.

“b) No indication of the time of physical activity within the school (number of hours of Physical Education classes), which could be diffrent given socio-economic status.

c) Nor indication either of time in games in recess or free time.”

Thank you for this feedback. We agree that the lower engagement in sports clubs of full-day school students might be compensated by being physically active in other settings, i.e. in voluntary physical activity programs at full-day school, in recess or in free leisure time out of school. However, sports clubs are by far the main providers of physical activity offers in Germany. Hence, we consider the findings of this paper as relevant and noteworthy on their own. Nevertheless, further research should aim to answer the question if full-day school students’ lower engagement in sports clubs might be compensated by physical activity in other settings.

“Other aspects

Phrases should not be initiated with a preposition (for, then, or …etc).”

Thank you for this remark. We carefully checked the manuscript and avoided initiating phrases with a preposition.

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Decision Letter 1

David Meyre

31 Oct 2019

Are primary school children attending full-day school still engaged in sports clubs?

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Acceptance letter

David Meyre

11 Nov 2019

PONE-D-19-19689R1

Are primary school children attending full-day school still engaged in sports clubs?

Dear Dr. Spengler:

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