PHYSICAL ACTIVITY PATTERNS OF TURKISH ADOLESCENTS: INFLUENCE OF SOME SOCIAL FACTORS

Both sexes have expressed that their most important reason to exercise was to take care of their health. This shows that adolescents have comprehended the relationship between health and exercising. The reasons why they want to exercise are similar for both sexes, but girls want to exercise in order to lose weight and boys want to exercise in order to become stronger. These reasons have more significance when compared to others.

The data, that should be considered when making plans towards increasing exercise rate, are adolescents take part in sportive activities with their friends and play in a team. Parents rarely oppose to sportive activities and there is no statistical difference between girls and boys concerning parental point of view. So, it is obvious that family is not an obstacle to exercise and furthermore there is not any restriction towards girls. Also the study of Anderssen and Wold (1) support the opinion that others have an important impact in promoting physical activity in adolescents either by serving as models or acting as supporters.

Age is an important factor for the relationship between adolescence and exercising. Age especially becomes important due to the fact that, most of these habits are acquired during puberty. It is well known that the possibility of keeping the habits of puberty during the maturity period is higher.

A significant correlation in a way that results in a decrease of exercising with the age is seen in this study. Early adolescents get more exercise -either moderate or heavy- than late adolescents and furthermore there is a statistical difference between two groups in respect to getting only moderate exercise. So, it leads us to think that early adolescents get moderate exercises more easily owing to the capability of their bodies. It is understood that, early adolescents should be given priority in creating a habit of exercising, however some precautions must be taken to prevent them from giving up the habit of exercising at older ages.

Although SES does not seem to be an important factor which effects exercise in logistic regression analysis, there is a relationship between SES and TIME, which is reverse and statistically significant. This finding could be gainsaid as the possibility of reaching exercising resources of individuals whose SES is high, is more than the others.