GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN THE VISEGRAD COUNTRIES (V4)

Background. Physical inactivity is also a significant problem in East-Central Europe and Hungary where 20% of the population does sports regularly while 53% of them never, in turn, 24% of the people does sports few times monthly. Insufficient physical activity is an increasing public health problem among young people and adolescents. Several types of research examined the quality and extent of physical activity related to different factors (social demographic, psychosocial, and lifestyle, etc.).

Material and methods. Interviewing was carried out from April to June 2015 at the same time in each Visegrad country. IPAQ extended physical activity questionnaire and a self-edited questionnaire were used to assess nutritional and activity habits (In order to evaluate data, INDARES software, and paper-based questionnaires were used for 2145 persons from different secondary schools).

Results. In low PA level category, male students were rather found while in high PA level category, male students showed higher ratios than females. From 56.7% to 77.8% of male students occurred in high PA level category opposite to female students where this rate was from 42.4% to 67.4%. We found significant gender differences in total MET/week values (p<0.001) in the V4 countries.

Conclusions. We found significant differences in the Visegrad countries and between sexes. These differences draw the attention to improving deficiencies in physical activity of secondary school students with well-defined risk group interventions.