Health Care : Current Reviews

Assessment of physical activity levels, fitness and perceived barriers to physical activity practice in adolescents: A cross-sectional study

Euro Health Care and Fitness Summit

September 01-03, 2015 Valencia, Spain

Isabel Fernandez Prieto1, Sara Font Decaba2 and Maria Giné-Garriga1

1Universitat Ramon Llull, Spain 2Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Health Care: Current Reviews

Abstract:

Introduction: Adolescence is a time of physical, psychological and social. The acquisition of preventive health habits should be the corner-stone of your health in the future. Recent studies show that at this stage there is a decrease in levels of physical activity (PA), along with high rates of overweight and obesity. Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the levels of AF and its fitness (CF) in relation to the perceived barriers (PB) and the factors limiting the practice of AF in a sample of adolescents taking into consideration a stratified sample of the dichotomy of being overweight. The secondary objective was to replicate the results by gender. Methods: A cross-sectional study was done for one hundred forty-three adolescents (46.2% boys and 53.8% girls, mean age 15 years) Secondary Education (ESO) in a public school district Random (Sants - Montjuïc) to city. The variables evaluated were: (a) CF (Alpha-Fitness); (b) the levels of AF (Physical Activity Questionnaire PAQ-A); and (c) perceived barriers (self-report questionnaire Barriers to Physical Exercise). Analysis of the data: Dichotomisation the variable BMI (BMI), according to the weight of categorical classification established by the World Health Organization, were grouped into: 1) Absence of overweight adolescents (70.6%, 101 adolescents) and 2) adolescents are overweight or obese (29.4%, 42 adolescents). The distribution of the presence of excess weight is evenly by sex and proof of Pearson Chi-Cuadrado (significance level α=0.05) shows independence or not suffer from being overweight boy or girl (p �??Value=0821). Averages between groups were compared with Student�??s t test\ Results: CF levels of adolescent overweight / obesity tends to be significantly lower (p-value <0.05) than those who have not. However, there were no significant differences (p-value>0.05) between groups for levels of AF. Regarding barriers, those related to body image, as well as physical and social anxiety are significantly (p-value <0.05) perceived by different group of teenagers are overweight. The results show how the gender CF and AF levels of boys were significantly higher (p - value<0.05) than girls. As expected, girls give significantly higher (p-value <0.05) perceived barrier of the image, as well as the score of the barriers to fatigue and laziness. Discussion & Conclusions: The differences found in most of the results indicate that there is a relationship between overweight / obesity and had lower levels of AF. As per the CF were not changes between groups. The variable gender (being a girl) and BMI (overweight or obese) have a significant direct relationship to perceive greater barriers to the practice of AF.

Biography :

Isabel Fernandez Prieto, is currently conducting his PhD studies at the Universitat Ramon Llull, where she works as a Teacher of physiotherapy and Coordinator of external practices physiotherapy students. She graduated in physiotherapy in 1987 with degree in Humanities from the University Ramon Llull, where also study relevant to the research proficiency courses (2006) were done. She has a great hospital care experience for over 20 years.

Email: isabelfp@blanquerna.url.edu