You have full access to this open access article. The actions required to achieve higher-quality and harmonised global surveillance of child and adolescent movement behaviours physical activity, sedentary behaviour including screen time, sleep are unclear.
Two survey rounds were used, with items categorised under: 1 funding, 2 capacity building, 3 methods, and 4 other issues e. We received 62 responses to round 1 of the survey and 59 to round 2. There was consensus for most items. The two highest rated round 2 items in each category were the following; for funding 1 it was greater funding for surveillance and public funding of surveillance; for capacity building 2 it was increased human capacity for surveillance e.
There was a lack of agreement on using private funding for surveillance or surveillance research. This study provides a prioritised and international consensus list of actions required to improve surveillance of movement behaviours in children and adolescents globally. This study used a Delphi process with 62 international experts in child and adolescent movement behaviours to identify the actions needed to improve global surveillance of movement behaviours in childhood and adolescence.
There was a high degree of agreement for almost all items in the Delphi Survey. The top priority was increased funding for surveillance β this would underpin the other priority actions identified: establishment of regional hubs to support surveillance, development of standardised surveillance protocols, improved measurement methods, improved human capacity in surveillance of human movement behaviours, and greater stakeholder awareness of World Health Organisation WHO movement behaviour guidelines and strategies.
Respondents did not reach consensus on where the funding of surveillance should come from. There may be a need to establish a globally accepted framework for using funding from private and public sources for movement behaviour research and surveillance. The surveillance of movement behaviours physical activity, PA; sedentary behaviour and sleep is essential for many reasons: to provide an understanding of the extent to which guidelines are being met; to allow identification of inequalities and temporal trends, to evaluate the effects of policy or other environmental changes such as the impact of movement restrictions to limit the spread of infectious disease , to allocate resources appropriately and to permit cross-country comparisons [ 1 , 3 ].
