News Release

Home-schoolers see no added health risks over time

Rice-led study finds better sleep, diet habits help counter shortfalls in formal exercise

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Rice University

Laura Kabiri, Rice University

image: Laura Kabiri view more 

Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Years of home-schooling don't appear to influence the general health of children, according to a Rice University study.

A report by Rice kinesiology lecturer Laura Kabiri and colleagues in the Oxford University Press journal Health Promotion International puts forth evidence that the amount of time a student spends in home school is "weakly or not at all related to multiple aspects of youth physical health."

"Although there may be differences in the health of elementary through high school home-schoolers, those differences don't seem to change with additional time spent in home school," Kabiri said. "In other words, staying in home school longer isn't related to increased health benefits or deficits."

Earlier this year Kabiri and her Rice team reported that home-schooled students who depended on maintaining physical fitness through outside activities were often falling short.

The flip side presented in the new report should come as good news to parents and students. The study was conducted by Kabiri and colleagues at Texas Woman's University and the University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHealth) at San Antonio.

The results from studies of more than 140 children in grades kindergarten through 5, who were tested against statistically normal data for children of their age and gender, accounted for prior published research that showed home-schooled children have less upper-body and abdominal muscle strength and more abdominal fat when compared to public school students. Additional studies also showed that home-schooling benefited sleep patterns, overall body composition and diet.

However, to the researchers' surprise, these differences in home-schooler health did not appear to be affected either way by increased time in home school.

"Body composition can relate to sleep as well as diet," Kabiri said. "And as far as muscular health goes, these kids are still active. We're not saying there's not an upfront benefit or detriment to their health, but after an initial gain or loss, there aren't additional gains or losses over time if you're going to home-school your children for one year or their entire careers. The relationship between their health and the time they spend in home school seems to be irrelevant."

###

Co-authors of the study are doctoral student Allison Butcher and Associate Professor Wayne Brewer of Texas Woman's University and Alexis Ortiz, the Berneice Castella Endowed Allied Health Chair in Geriatric Science in the department of physical therapy at UTHealth San Antonio.

The research was supported in part by the Texas Physical Therapy Foundation.

Read the abstract at https://academic.oup.com/heapro/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/heapro/daz047/5492359.

This news release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/2019/05/23/home-schoolers-see-no-added-health-risks-over-time/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related materials:

No sweat? That's an issue for home-schooled children: http://news.rice.edu/2019/02/01/no-sweat-thats-an-issue-for-home-schooled-children-2/

Kabiri Research Group: https://kabiri.rice.edu

Rice Department of Kinesiology: https://kinesiology.rice.edu

Wiess School of Natural Sciences: https://naturalsciences.rice.edu

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance.


Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.