A cross-cultural study of adolescents' physical activity levels in France and Spain

Abstract

The goals of this study were (1) to describe and compare levels of physical activity (PA), assessed by accelerometry, of adolescents in two close Spanish and French cities according to gender and period of the week and (2) to assess, with reference to country and gender, the extent to which international PA guidelines were fulfilled. The PA of 401 adolescents (53.37% females) from France and Spain (55.72% French) aged 14.45±0.67 years was assessed with GT3X accelerometers for seven consecutive days to evaluate their habitual levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Data collection took place from September to December 2010 in six public and state schools in France and Spain. There were significant differences in MVPA in terms of country, gender and period of the week. Spanish adolescents were more active than French adolescents, boys were more active than girls and MVPA was higher on weekdays than at weekends. French girls showed the lowest level of PA. Only 35.9% of the whole sample met the guidelines for PA in both countries. Governments of relevant countries, especially France, should adopt PA promotion policies targeted at adolescents in order to enhance their compliance with PA guidelines.

Keywords:

• Accelerometry
• meeting of guidelines
• physical activity measurement
• adolescence

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the help of all the adolescents who took part in the EPAPA/EPAFA study as well as their parents and teachers for their collaboration. The EPAPA/EPAFA study was financially supported by the provinces of Aragón (Spain) and Aquitaine (France) as projects of border cooperation to help us in the collection of data. This study was also supported by grants from the Government of Aragon and CAI (Savings Bank of Aragon).