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

Time spent per week for total activities (TIMEi) was calculated by multiplying the frequency (FREQi) and the duration (DURi) per episode for all activities:

TIME = FREQi * DURi

The time spent in physical activity is not symmetrically distributed. Therefore, we generally present the median value instead of arithmetic mean (AM) when describing the central location of the data.

Chi square, Student's t test, and logistic regression analysis were used in statistical analysis.

Results
Demographic characteristics of the subjects are presented in Table 1. It was of notice that, around half of the students had one or more poor grades in their last report card and fathers were more educated than mothers.

Five hundred and thirty one (60.1 %) students were practicing some kind of sport whereas 352 (39.9 %) students were doing no exercise. The mean values for TIMEv, TIMEm,and TIME for adolescents participating some kind of sport were calculated as 6.8574 (hour/week) (n=501, min: 0.01, Max. 120.49), 5.3115 (hour/week) (n=295, min: 0.01, Max: 75.33), and 9.5732 (hour/week) (n=531, min: 0.05, Max. 120.49) respectively.

The numbers of exercising and non-exercising adolescents were 480 (62.6 %) vs 287 (37.4 %) for those living with their families and 50 (44.2 %) vs 63 (55.8) for those living in other conditions. There was a significant difference between the two groups with regard to exercise status (X2 = 13.820, p = 0.000).
Boys performed vigorous as well as moderate type of exercises significantly more than girls (Table 2).

Early adolescents performed significantly more moderate type exercise (2.09 ± 4.49; n=478), than late adolescents (1.35 ± 4.86) (t = 2.349, p=0.019).
Self-esteem was found to be high in 460 (53.4 %), moderate in 370 (42.9 %), and low in 32 (3.7 %) of the students. The mean value of problem solving and self-care scores was 92.2 ± 18.1 (Min. 50, Max. 166) and 99.5 ± 19.8 (Min. 32, Max. 154) respectively.

Most commonly preferred sports were ball games for both sexes (Soccer for boys and basketball for girls). Vast majority of the students preferred basketball, running, cycling, aerobics, soccer, or dancing. 89.1 % of girls and 86.0 % of boys chose one or more of these six exercise types (Figure 1).