Article RETRACTED due to malpractice Daily Activity, Time Use, and Childhood Stunting: A Scoping Review of How Movement and Growth Are Studied and Measured
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v83.119765Keywords:
Stunting, physical activity, time use, motor development, child growth, scoping reviewAbstract
Childhood stunting reflects long-term undernutrition and is usually framed as a problem of diet, yet how children spend their day, through play, work, study, and rest, is increasingly studied alongside growth. Objective. This scoping review maps how research has examined and measured daily activity, time use, and physical fitness in relation to childhood stunting, and how a major longitudinal cohort captures these constructs in practice. Methods. Following the Arksey and O'Malley framework and PRISMA-ScR, we searched Scopus and screened records by document type, language, and year. 368 documents published between 2010 and 2025 met the criteria and were charted by year, geography, source, and theme. The Young Lives cohort documentation was examined as a measurement case. Results. Nutrition themes appeared in 358 documents and activity, fitness, or motor themes in 252 (68 percent), with 252 addressing both at once. The activity strand has tracked the nutrition strand closely since about 2019. Nutrition and public health journals carry most of the work, while dedicated movement and physical education outlets are scarce. In the cohort case, 299 unique variables were available, including a harmonised growth block and a harmonised time-use block across four countries. Conclusions. Research on stunting has widened from a diet-only view to one in which movement and growth are studied together, but the measurement of activity remains uneven and movement science is underrepresented. The field offers a clear and largely unfilled role for physical education and human movement research.
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