Attitudes toward the physical activity and sport practice in Spanish adolescents: the AVENA study

Abstract

the aim of this study was to know the attitudes toward the physical activity and sport practice oriented to health in a representative sample of Spanish adolescents. A descriptive cross-sectional study was implemented and the survey about behaviours, attitudes and values related to physical activity and sport practice developed in the AVENA study was used. The sample size was 2859 Spanish students from public and private secondary schools in 5 Spanish cities: Granada, Madrid, Murcia, Santander and Zaragoza. The main results verify that both boys and girls have a greater orientation towards process-related attitudes (PA) of physical activity and sport that outcome-related attitudes (AR) of the practice. In boys and girls, both AP and AR both genders, there is a progressive decrease when increasing the age. Adolescents who engaged in physical activity had higher levels of attitudes than non-practitioners. In conclusion, AP became more important than AR in young adolescents; both AP and AR were higher in boys than in girls and attitude values decreased with increasing age. The knowledge of attitudes might allow to develop effective and long-term successful intervention programmes for adopting healthy lifestyles in the current young people

Keywords

• Attitudes
• Physical activity
• Adolescent