Exploratory Determined Correlates of Physical Activity in Children and Adolescents: The MoMo Study

Steffen CE Schmidt, Jennifer Schneider, Anne Kerstin Reimers, Claudia Niessner and Alexander Woll
Additional contact information
Steffen CE Schmidt: Institute of Sports and Sports Science, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Jennifer Schneider: Institute of Sports and Sports Science, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Anne Kerstin Reimers: Institute of Human Movement Science and Health, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Technical University of Chemnitz, 09111 Chemnitz, Germany
Claudia Niessner: Institute of Sports and Sports Science, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Alexander Woll: Institute of Sports and Sports Science, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Background : Physical activity is an important contributor to reducing the risk for a variety of diseases. Understanding why people are physically active contributes to evidence-based planning of public health interventions because successful actions will target factors known to be related to physical activity (PA). Therefore the aim of this study is to identify the most meaningful correlates of PA in children and adolescents using a large, representative data set. Methods : Among n = 3539 (1801 boys) 6 to 17-year-old participants of the German representative Motorik-Modul baseline study (2003–2006) a total of 1154 different demographic, psychological, behavioral, biological, social and environmental factors were ranked according to their power of predicting PA using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regressions. Results : A total of 18 (in girls) and 19 (in boys) important PA predictors from different, personal, social and environmental factors have been identified and ranked by LASSO. Peer modeling and physical self-concept were identified as the strongest correlates of PA in both boys and girls. Conclusions : The results confirm that PA interventions must target changes in different categories of PA correlates, but we suggest to focus particularly on the social environment and physical self-concept for interventions targeting children and adolescents in Germany nowadays. We also strongly recommend to repeatedly track correlates of PA, at least every 10 years, from representative samples in order to tailor contemporary PA interventions.

Keywords: physical activity; correlates; children; adolescents; MoMo study; LASSO (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/3/415/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/3/415/ (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:16:y:2019:i:3:p:415-:d:202377

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 ().