Physical activity awareness of European adolescents: The HELENA study

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to assess physical activity (PA) awareness of adolescents and to identify anthropometric and psychosocial factors that can lead to under or overestimation of PA. This study included 2044 adolescents. Participants wore a uniaxial accelerometer for 7 days to measure PA and completed a self-rated questionnaire about PA. Adolescents were classified into four PA awareness subgroups (realistically active, overestimators, underestimators and realistically inactive) according to the self-rated and objective assessment of PA. Characteristics and psychosocial factors of the self-rated physically active groups were compared using bivariate and multivariate mixed logistic regression models. Forty-five percent of adolescents reported their PA levels correctly (34.8% realistically active and 10.1% realistically inactive). Among the 59.4% who were objectively inactive, 82.9% tended to overestimate their PA level. Adolescents who overestimated their PA level were older (P < .05), had more support from mother and a best friend (P < .05) and had higher cardiorespiratory fitness (P < .001) compared with those who were realistically active. A significant number of adolescents believe that they are physically active when they are not. Improving awareness, especially in the high-risk groups identified here, might help to bring about behavioural changes in physically inactive adolescents.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• health
• assessment

Disclosure statement

The authors do have any competing interests.

Additional information

Funding

The HELENA study is made possible by the financial support of the European Community Sixth RTD Framework Programme [Contract FOOD-CT-20056007034] and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [RYC-2010-05957 and RYC-2011-09011]. The content of this article reflects only the authors’ views, and the European Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.