Keeping active: what difference does the day make?  

New BCS70 research has shown clear differences in how active people are depending on the day of the week and their socioeconomic circumstances. 

What we asked you 

As part of our health-focused survey in 2016-18, many of you agreed to wear a monitor so we could track your physical activity during the course of a week. These monitors recorded time spent sleeping, lying, sitting, standing, walking and exercising. 

What the research found 

A research team, led by UCL, analysed the data we collected from these monitors to explore how active people are across the week and find out whether this could be connected to people’s socioeconomic circumstances.    

The researchers found that from Monday to Friday people from a more economically advantaged background tended to spend more time sat down and less time standing, moving and walking than people from less well-off backgrounds. For example, on weekdays those educated to degree level or higher notched up 4% more sedentary time compared to everyone else while those without any formal qualifications spent 4% less time in sedentary activity.  

But this trend was reversed at the weekend when people from more advantaged backgrounds spent more time moving around compared to less advantaged people.   

According to the researchers, these patterns of activity could be explained by differences in the types of work people tend to do. Manual jobs, which keep people moving throughout the working week, may be more common among people from less advantaged backgrounds. On the other hand, people from more advantaged backgrounds may be more likely to have desk-based jobs.  

The researchers also examined differences in the total time people spent exercising in the week, and when in the week they exercised. They found that people from advantaged backgrounds spent the most time exercising, and this was the case on both weekdays and weekends.  

Why this research matters 

The benefits of physical activity for our health are well documented, so it’s important to understand what part socioeconomic factors could be playing in how active people are in mid-life.   

The researchers suggest that current exercise guidelines are not as effective as they could be because they are too generalised. Instead, they advocate for more tailored advice for different groups, which takes into account the different types of jobs people do and their personal circumstances.  

Read the full research report 

Socioeconomic gradients in 24-hour movement patterns across weekends and weekdays in a working-age sample: evidence from the 1970 British Cohort Study by Joanna Blodgett, David Bann, Sebastian Chastin, Matthew Ahmadi, Emmanuel Stamatakis, Rachel Cooper and Mark Hamer was published in the BMJ Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health in May 2024.