Abstract

PINHEIRO GORDIA, Alex; BIANCHINI DE QUADROS, Teresa M; DE CAMPOS, Wagner  and  PETROSKI, Édio L. Adolescents' physical quality of life: associations with physical activity and sex . Rev. salud pública [online]. 2009, vol.11, n.1, pp.50-61. ISSN 0124-0064.

Objective Analysing associations between adolescents' physical activity level (PAL), alcohol consumption, body mass index (BMI) and sociodemographic variables and their physical quality of life (QoL). Methods The sample consisted of 608 adolescents aged 14 to 20 who were fulltime students in public and private high schools in the municipality of Lapa, PR, southern Brazil. The variables analysed were the adolescents' physical QoL, PAL, alcohol consumption, BMI and sociodemographic variables. Descriptive statistics, the chi-square test, Fisher's exact test and binary logistical regression were used in the statistical analysis. Results The physical QoL of the adolescents studied here exhibited satisfactory results (74.4 mean score). Less active individuals had 1.7 times greater risk of obtaining poor physical domain scores than their active counterparts; girls were 2.8 times more likely to have a poor physical domain score compared to boys. Conclusions The adolescent population subsets most at risk of scoring badly on the physical domain were those having low PAL and being female.

Keywords : Quality of life; physical activity; lifestyle; adolescent behavior; gender and health; body mass index.

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