Individual and School Correlates of Adolescent Leisure Time Physical Activity in Quebec, Canada

José Massougbodji, Alexandre Lebel and Philippe De Wals
Additional contact information
José Massougbodji: Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, Laval University, Quebec City, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
Alexandre Lebel: Evaluation Platform on Obesity Prevention, Quebec Heart and Lung Institute Research Center, Quebec City, QC G1V 4G5, Canada
Philippe De Wals: Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, Laval University, Quebec City, QC G1V 0A6, Canada

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: Background : Leisure time physical activity (LTPA) correlates have been mostly studied in relation to adolescents’ home neighbourhoods, but not so much in relation to the environment of their schools’ neighbourhoods. We sought to investigate how objective environmental measures of the schools’ vicinity are related to adolescents’ self-reported LTPA. Methods : Individual data from the Quebec High School Students Health Survey (QHSSHS) were matched with schools’ socioeconomic indicators, as well as geographic information system-based indicators of their built environments. Self-reported levels of LTPA during the school year were assessed according to intensity, frequency and index of energy expenditure. Associations per gender between covariates and LTPA were estimated using ordinal multilevel regression with multiple imputations. Results : Boys (21% of which were highly active) were more active than girls (16% of which were highly active) ( p ≤ 0.01). The incremental variance between schools explained by the contextual variables in the final models was higher among girls (7.8%) than boys (2.8%). The number of parks or green spaces within 750 m around their schools was positively associated with student LTPA in both genders. Conclusions : The promotion of parks around schools seems to be an avenue to be strengthened.

Keywords: adolescents; built environment; geographic information system; leisure-time physical activity; school neighbourhoods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/3/412/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/3/412/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:3:p:412-:d:133719

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().