Figure 4 Yang, Telama, Laakso: Parents’ Physical Activity, Socioeconomic Status
Related Figures (8)
Table 1. Numbers of subjects’ responses to questions of physical activity by cohort, age and gender in a 12-year follow-up period Physical activity and involvement in sport were measured by means of a short questionnaire which was the same from 1980 to 1989. Questions concerned the frequency of leisure-time physical activity, the intensity of physical activity, the amount of sports-club training, participation in sporting competitions, and the habitual way of spending leisure time. The physical activity index (PAI), ranging from five to fourteen, was a sum of these five variables. The coefficient of internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) was calculated for all age groups as an indicator of the reliability of the sum index. The coefficient varied from .44 to .76. (Telama et al. 1994; Yang 1993). In 1992 the questions concerning sports activities were, intensity of physical activity, frequency of intensive physical activity, frequency of hours per week of intensive physical activity, frequency of average time spent in physical activity, and membership of a sports club. Figure 1. Percentages of children’s participation in sport and physical activity by age, gender and cohorts in a follow-up study Table 2. Correlations of parental physical activity and children’s physical activity index (PAI) in five repeated measurements (pairwise) by age and gender Table 3. Means and standard deviations of children’s physical activity index (PAI) by age, gender, fathers’ socioeconomic status and parents’ education The level of participation in organized sport was divided, according to a 3-year follow-up survey, into four categories: Actives, who participated in sports-club training at least once a week in both measurements; Beginners, who started tc take part in sporting activities after the first measurement; Dropouts, who dropped out of sport after the first measurement; and Outsiders, who did not participate in sport at all in either measurement. Children of active fathers were significantly and clearly more persistent in sport and less likely to drop out of sport than those of passive fathers (Figure 2). Interestingly, the proportion of active boys and girls with a single parent was found to be higher than that of those with passive fathers; or even with moderate-activity fathers, in the case of the boys. Figure 3 shows that the influence of the mothers’ physical activity was similar to that of the fathers’, but there were no statistically significant differences between the groups among the boys. 4 p<.05, > p<.01, ° p<.001 and — no significant Table 4. Percentages of fathers’ physical activity and socioeconomic status of sports participation (ages from 9 to 15 years) in the most popular sports
