Organized and Non-Organized Physical. Activities of Adolescents. Jorge Mota, Marta Almeida, Rute Santos, José Carlos Ribeiro, and Maria Paula Santos.
Pediatric Exercise Science, 2009, 21, 233-239 © 2009 Human Kinetics, Inc.
Association of Perceived Environmental Characteristics and Participation in Organized and Non-Organized Physical Activities of Adolescents Jorge Mota, Marta Almeida, Rute Santos, José Carlos Ribeiro, and Maria Paula Santos Specific behavior context such as type of PA (organized vs. nonorganized) might be associated with different environmental correlates. The main goal of this cross-sectional survey was to examine perceived environmental associations with type of adolescents’ physical activity (PA) choices (organized and nonorganized). A sample of this study comprised 425 girls with mean age of 14.5 years-old. Environmental variables and PA were assessed by questionnaire, which allowed to define the type (organized or nonorganized) of PA. No associations were found between environmental perceptions and the participation in organized activities. However, different dimensions of environmental variables such as accessibilities to facilities (p ≤ .05) aesthetics (p ≤ .05) and social environment (p ≤ .05) were associated to girls’ PA participation in nonorganized activities (NOPA). Our findings suggested that some environmental characteristics might play an important role in girls’ NOPA participation.
Low levels of physical activity (PA) in childhood may increase the risk of developing obesity and other diseases such as type 2 diabetes (4). Longitudinal studies have documented an age-related decline of 26–37% in total PA during adolescence (11,23). Further it is well documented that girls are less active than boys (21,2). The reasons behind this decline in physical activity, particularly among girls are unknown, but there is increasing interest in the influence of the settings and environments where physical activity takes place (22). There is growing recognition of the role of the environment in influencing health and health behaviors, and an environment that encourages excess energy intake ad reduced energy expenditure is widely considered to be a driving force behind population-wide weight gain. Recent studies showed some significant associations between obesity and environment (25) as well as between environment and youth’s PA (6,26). Furthermore, one aspect of the environment’s role in obesity that has received recent attention is the way that neighborhoods and communities are designed to promote or discourage different kinds of PA (10; 18).
Mota, Almeida, R. Santos, Ribeiro, and M. Santos are with the Research Centre in Physical Activity and Health Faculty of Sports, Porto University, 4200-450 Porto, Portugal. 233
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Overall, most of the activity obtained from young people was provided for structured (like sport activities in clubs or formal exercise programs) and unstructured (like walking or other physical activities that were not guided by trainer) programs and settings in the community (24). In fact, age-related changes in PA behavior depend also on its type and characteristics, and research findings support the idea that some aspects of the built environment could be related to PA on different contexts (18). Nonetheless, one important gap in this field is the study of behavioral context, which relates the setting in which the behavior takes place (9). Indeed, it was reported that dependent of location, psycho-social and environmental correlates explained between 15 and 55% of the variance in PA (17). Thus specific behavior context such as type of PA undertaken (organized vs. nonorganized) might be associated with different environmental correlates. This is noteworthy because it has been pointed out that is important to study the behavior specific environments rather than a general behavior (20). However, at best of our knowledge, associations between perceived environmental attributes and participation in organized (OPA) or nonorganized physical activities (NOPA) have not been well described. We hypothesized that a specific behavioral outcome measure (OPA vs. NOPA) might be associated with different specific environmental variables. Therefore the main goal of this cross-sectional survey was to examine the associations between the type of PA and the perceived neighborhood environmental characteristics in girls.
Methods Sample Eight urban public secondary schools from the North of Portugal, participated in this study. The potential sample included all the 450 students girls attending the seventh -ninth grades and registered at schools recruited. A questionnaire was distributed and filled out during physical education classes in spring 2006. A response rate of 94.4% was obtained and, 425 girls aged 13–17years-old were taken for this study. Informed written consent was obtained from the participants and their parents or guardians before the subjects entered into the study. The choice of school was based on District localization and taking into consideration that they cover different ranges of socioeconomic level as well as different neighborhood characteristics to provide variability in the sample.
Anthropometry Body height and body weight were determined by standard anthropometric methods. Height was measured to the nearest millimeter in bare or stocking feet with girls standing upright against a Holtain portable stadiometer. Body weight was measured to the nearest 0.10Kg, with participants lightly dressed (underwear and tee-shirt) using a portable digital beam scale (Tanita Inner Scan BC 532). Body mass index (BMI) was estimated from weight/height2 (Kg/m2).
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Type of Physical Activity Participants completed a questionnaire investigating leisure time activities (21 activities) including participation in organized sports activities (OPA) defined as “sportive activities guided by a trainer or other sports authority” and/or nonorganized sports activities (NOPA), defined as “non-guided sport activities”. Responses were dichotomous (‘Yes’ or ‘No’). These items have previously been shown to have high reliability, with intraclass correlation coefficients (one-week interval) of 0.91 and 0.92 respectively (15). As students might be engaged in both, OPA and NOPA, for the purpose of this study we assigned to NOPA group only those who only reported to be involved in NOPA. Those who reported to be involved in both or only in organized activities were assigned to the OPA group. It should be noted that they can choose other leisure-time activities such as TV watching, music, reading, net surfing and a couple of other activities (21 activities) besides physical activity.
Environmental Assessment A questionnaire using the Environmental Module (Perceived Neighborhood Environments) of the International Physical Activity Prevalence Study was used. The questionnaire was designed to be a brief assessment of variables believed to be related to the activity-friendliness of neighborhoods. Neighborhood environmental variables assessed included (I) Access to destination (two questions); (II) Connectivity of the Street Network (one question); (III) Infrastructure for walking and cycling (one question); (IV) Neighborhood Safety (two questions); (V) Social Environment (one question); (VI) Aesthetics (one question); (VII) Recreation facilities (one question). These questions have previously been used in Portuguese adolescents, showing good reliability (16). A four-point scale assessed each question: strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree; strongly agree. In this study, responses were collapsed in two categories: (1) ‘somewhat agree’ and ‘strongly agree’ (2) strongly disagree’ and ‘somewhat disagree’.
Statistical Procedures The analysis was carried out using the SPSS 15.0 program. Descriptive statistics included mean and standard deviation. The chi-square (2) was used to verify the associations between perceived environmental variables and groups of activity (OPA and NOPA). Spearman’s correlation coefficient was calculated to characterize the associations among the variables of interest. The level of significance was set at p < .05.
Results Table 1 summarizes the sample size and distribution as well as descriptive (mean ± SD) for the anthropometric characteristics. Only 29.9% (n = 138) of girls were reported to participate in OPA, while 70.1% (n = 323) reported to be engaged in NOPA. No statistically significant differences between PA groups were found in age, weight, height and BMI between groups.
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Table 1 Girls Descriptive Characteristics According to Type of Physical Activity Participation
Age (yr) Weight (kg) Height (cm) BMI(Kg ∙ m2)
NOPA (n = 323; 70.1%)
OPA (n = 138 ; 29.9%)
X ± SD
95% CI
X ± SD
95% CI
14.5 ± 1.5 53.5 ± 10.2 159.0 ± 7.2 21.1 ± 3.4
14.4–14.8 52.4–54.6 158.1–159.7 20.7–21.5
14.4 ± 1.5 52.1 ± 10.0 158.0 ± 8.1 20.7 ± 2.9
14.3–14.7 50.4–53.7 157.9–159.3 20.3–21.2
Associations between Perceived Neighborhood Environments and OPA and NOPA are shown in Table 2. While no statistical significant differences were found for OPA and perceived neighborhood, statistically significantly (p < .05) associations were found for NOPA with regard to access to destinations; connectivity of the street network; infrastructures for walking and cycling; aesthetics and recreation facilities.
Discussion This paper examines the environmental correlates of organized and nonorganized PA of adolescent girls. This is consistent with recommendations to examine correlates of specific behaviors. Such knowledge could potentially help to design interventions programs to increase PA levels among adolescents. Our study shows that there were no significant associations between environmental characteristics and OPA but there were several significant associations with NOPA. This reinforces the idea that specific behavioral contexts might be associated with different environmental variables, which was already shown in adults (14,20,) but not in youth. Participation in OPA might be related with other variables such as SES (19) or parental support to drive to and from sport facilities or afford those activities (12) rather than environmental characteristics. However it is likely that NOPA are usually performed in the neighborhood surroundings in which perceived environment characteristics might play an important role with regard to PA participation. Our findings showed that different dimensions of environmental variables such as accessibilities to facilities, aesthetics, and connectivity of the street network¸ infrastructures for walking, cycling and recreation facilities were associated to girls’ NOPA participation. Further, they provided additional support to suggestions that creating supportive environments has the potential to increase this type of PA participation. In fact, our data agree with several studies showing that different environmental features such the number of sports facilities in the area and infrastructures were positively associated with more physically activity youth, especially girls (3,8) and with walking (13), which is in some extent location specific (17). For instance, a recent review showed that people in active-friendly environments are more likely to be physically active in their leisure time (18). Our data are also worthy to comment with regard to public health promotion because literature pointed out that girls are a target group with regard PA promotion because they are usually less active than boys in all ages (2). Our study
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•
Many stores are within easy walking distance of my home. It is easy to walk to a transit stop (bus, trolley) from my home. There are many four- way interactions in my neighborhood. There are sidewalks on most of the streets in my neighborhood. There is so much traffic on the streets that it makes it difficult or unpleasant to walk in my neighborhood The crime rate in my neighborhood makes it unsafe or unpleasant to walk in my neighborhood I see many people being physically active in my neighborhood There are many interesting things to look at while walking in my neighborhood My neighborhood has several public recreation facilities, such as parks, walking trails, bike paths, recreation centers, playgrounds, public swimming pools, etc.
Access to destinations
p < .05 ; ** p < .01
Recreations facilities
Aesthetics
Social environment
Neighborhood safety
Infrastructure for walking and cycling
Connectivity of the street network
Item
Scale Composition
−0.02
0.03
0.10*
0.13**
0.06
0.02
−0.004
−0.04 0.06
0.10*
−0.03
−0.00
0.10*
0.04
0.001 −0.001
0.11*
NOPA 29.9% (Rho)
−0.03
OPA 70.1% (Rho)
Table 2 Spearman’s Correlation Between Perceived Neighborhood Environments Domains and Types of Physical Activity Participation: Organized (OPA) and Nonorganized (NOPA)
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clearly showed that only a small amount of girls (29.9%) participated in OPA. Given the fact that previous findings showed that formal activities were more important among the more active groups for both boys and girls (15) it can be hypothesized that girls of this study were not enough active. Indeed, a previous study in a similar context we found that except for girls’ vigorously active group, the subjects’ preferred choices were NOPA instead OPA and that there was an increase in OPA participation as the PA level increases (15). So the current data might be an indirect indicator of the low levels of PA among these participant girls. From a public health perspective this findings seems to be worthy to comment because some studies provided additional data showing that OPA tends to persist into adulthood among some European (2), and American (1) adolescents. However, doubts about where girls choose to be engaged in PA still persist. Nonetheless our data highlighted that specific environmental features are associated with specific behavioral context. Therefore those environmental differences might be taken into account when programs and preventive strategies are designed. Limitations of the study should be recognized. The intent was to explore the relationships between variables but it is not possible to inferred causal relationships with such cross-sectional design. Nevertheless, the findings raise the need of future studies looking at specific behaviors and specific environmental attributes. Further data are needed to replicate these findings using longitudinal designs.
Conclusion Our study showed that there were no significant associations between environments and OPA but there were several significant associations with NOPA. Only 29% of the sample participated in OPA, which pointed out that expect formal programs to provide sufficient activity of most young girls. Acknowledgment This study was supported by grant:POCI/V.5/C0011/2005.
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