Original article
Correlates of Physical Activity Guideline Compliance for Adolescents in 100 U.S. Cities

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.09.025Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

This study assessed the rates and correlates of adolescents’ compliance with national guidelines for physical activity.

Methods

A cross-sectional phone survey of adolescents and their parents was conducted in the 100 largest cities in the United States in 2005. Adolescents ages 14–17 years (n = 6125) were asked how many days during the previous week and during a typical week they were physically active for at least 60 minutes. Compliance was defined as 5+ days per week. Parents provided data on teen’s age and race/ethnicity, parental education level, annual household income, and region of residence. Associations among these variables and compliance with physical activity guidelines were examined.

Results

Approximately 40% of the females and 57% of the males complied with the national physical activity guidelines. Logistic regression indicated that for both genders, compliance was significantly associated with having higher household income and that, for females only, compliance declined significantly with age. Region of residence did not predict compliance for either gender.

Conclusion

A majority of the girls and a large portion of the boys failed to meet the current guidelines, thereby increasing their risks of multiple health problems. Targeting intervention resources for low income teens and older adolescent teen girls is recommended.

Section snippets

Background

The Correlates of Indoor Tanning in Youth (CITY100) Teen/Parent survey was a health questionnaire and one component of a study assessing indoor tanning practices of adolescents living in the 100 largest U.S. cities [16]. The survey instruments were adapted from teen/parent indoor tanning surveys developed by Stryker et al [17]. We added items to assess several other health-related behaviors, including physical activity. We believed that introducing the survey as a teen “health” survey, versus a

Response rates and sample characteristics

Of the 8176 households that were reached and met eligibility criteria, 6125 households agreed to participate, for a cooperation rate of 74.9%. All 6125 households generated data on a teen; 71 of these households did not have accompanying parent data. Parents were missed when the parent requested an interview on a later date but was then not reachable. Table 1 shows the number of adolescent participants from each of the 100 cities, organized by region. There were 2962 male and 3153 female teens

Discussion

Using a validated measure and a large, multi-city U.S. sample, we found that under half of the adolescents met the current physical activity guidelines for youth. These data highlight the need for interventions to promote more physical activity, especially for those groups found to have substantially lower compliance levels. As expected, there were large gender differences, with 57% of males versus 40% of females meeting guidelines. This is a large difference, indicating that many more males

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by grants R01CA93532 and K05CA10051 from the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute. We thank Debra Rubio for assistance with manuscript preparation.

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