Background/Purpose: It has been documented adolescents differ in their pedometer-based physical activity (PA) levels across different gender and age groups (e.g., Vincent & Pangrazi, 2002). Such inquiries on the age and gender differences in adolescents'accelerometer-determined PA remain unexplored. Thus, this study was designed to investigate whether adolescents'accelerometer-determined PA differed as a function of gender and age.
Method: Participants were 188 middle school adolescents (95 boys; Mage=12.5 years, age ranged from 11-14 years) at a public school in the U.S. Their PA levels were assessed by Actical accelerometers for three PE classes. The outcome variables were adolescents' percentages of time spent in sedentary, light PA and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA).
Analysis/Results: Two-way MANOVA yielded a significant main effect for age, Wilks' Lambda=.89, F (9,433) = 2.45, p <.05. However, there was no significant main effect for gender. Significant univariate tests for age were obtained for sedentary, F (3, 180) = 4.99, p <.01, and MVPA, F (3, 180) = 4.25, p<.01. Follow-up tests indicated 12-year group had significantly more time in sedentary (13.63%) than the other three age groups (7.46% for 11-year, 7.49% for 13-year and 5.53% for 14-year), p <.01. This age group also had less time in MVPA (59.46%) than 11-year (67.31%) and 14-year groups (71.56%), p <.01.
Conclusions: The findings suggest 12-year adolescents were less physically active than other age group adolescents did in PE. Further research is warranted to explore the in-depth explanations of this phenomenon. Also, no gender differences occurred in adolescents' accelerometer-determined PA levels.
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