Physical Education's Contribution to Daily Physical Activity in Adolescents

Background/Purpose: One of the primary purposes of the Let’s Move Active Schools initiative is to help youth achieve national physical activity goals. Physical Education is considered the foundation of the initiative and as such determining PE’s contribution to daily physical activity (PA) is important. An emerging body of evidence has emerged in children but very limited data exist using objective PA measures in adolescents. 

Method: A total of 21 students between the ages of 13 and 15 wore an ActiTrainer accelerometer (ActiTrainer™, Fort Walton Beach, FL) to assess weekday PA over a two week period during school and outside of school. Freedson’s cut points for adolescents were used to determine PA intensity.

Analysis/Results: The sample accumulated 34 (14%) more minutes in light physical activity (LPA), 12 (41%) more minutes in moderate to vigorous (MPVA), 99 (30%) more movement counts per minute, and ~1,700 (24%) more steps/day on school days with PE compared to school days without PE. Similar to children we found that this sample of adolescents did not compensate for missed physical activity on school days with no PE. Sedentary activity was similar between school days with and without PE.

Conclusions: PE’s contribution to daily PA in adolescents more than doubles the contribution reported in numerous studies in children. Using accelerometer derived minutes in MVPA increased PE’s contribution to daily PA by more than 40% compared to using accelerometer derived step counts in the current study.  Previous pedometer studies may have underestimated the contribution PE makes to daily PA by 25-40%.