Links between Adolescents’ Engagement in Physical Activity and Their Attachment to Mothers, Fathers, and Peers

Ausra Lisinskiene and Vida Juskeliene
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Ausra Lisinskiene: Academy of Education, Vytautas Magnus University, 44248 Kaunas, Lithuania
Vida Juskeliene: Institute of Hygiene Lithuania, 01128 Vilnius, Lithuania

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 5, 1-11

Abstract: Physical activity (PA) is one of the key components in promoting a healthy lifestyle in children. PA offers a number of health benefits to children and their families. However, a large proportion of children do not meet the current PA guidelines (at least 60 min of PA daily). The problem of insufficient PA could be explained in relation to early childhood when attachment between the child and the parent begins and family habits are formed. As a result, physical inactivity in adolescence is associated with negative health outcomes such as obesity, heart diseases, and cardiometabolic risk. Therefore, this study is aimed at examining the links between adolescents’ engagement in physical activity and their attachment to their mother, father, and peers (trust, communication, alienation) as well as their socio-economic status (SES). We applied a quantitative cross-sectional study design. A total of 835 students aged from 15 to 18 (females = 480 and males = 355, M age = 16.0, SD = 1.1) completed the questionnaire. This study revealed that physical activity had a weak positive correlation to mother (r = 0.13, p = 0.01) and father attachment (r = 0.18, p = 0.01), trust (r = 0.17, p = 0.01), and communication (r = 0.16, p = 0.01) with both parents and a weak negative correlation with father alienation (r = 0.13, p = 0.01). The overall study results show that adolescent communication to father, male gender, a younger age, and a higher SES are important factors in relation to adolescent physical activity.

Keywords: physical activity; attachment to parents; mother; father; adolescents; peers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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