When children play, they feel better: organized activity participation and health in adolescents

BMC Public Health

Table 1 Description of the study population: frequencies of respondents participating in various separate organized leisure-time activities (top section), clusters of activity patterns (middle section), and by number of activities (bottom section) by gender and age

		Gender					Age							Total
		Boy (n = 5170)		Girl (n = 5333)			11 (n = 3332)		13 (n = 3541)		15 (n = 3630)			(n = 10,503)
		n	%	n	%	p-value	n	%	n	%	n	%	p-value	n	%
Participation on each OLTA separately	Team sports	3067	59.3	1960	36.8	<0.001	1709	51.3	1773	50.1	1545	42.6	<0.001	5027	47.9
	Individual sports	1468	28.4	1710	32.1	<0.001	1119	33.6	1088	30.7	971	26.7	<0.001	3178	30.3
	Art school	1012	19.6	2416	45.3	<0.001	1350	40.5	1175	33.2	903	24.9	<0.001	3428	32.6
	Youth org.	733	14.2	640	12.0	<0.001	547	16.4	495	14.0	331	9.1	<0.001	1373	13.1
	Recr./Leisure centre	975	18.9	1050	19.7	ns	838	25.2	727	20.5	460	12.7	<0.001	2025	19.3
	Church	370	7.2	427	8.0	ns	316	9.5	262	7.4	219	6.0	<0.001	797	7.6
OLTA clusters	Active^a	4238	82.0	4292	80.5	ns	2899	87.0	2960	83.6	2671	73.6	<0.001	8530	81.2
	All-rounders	1578	30.5	1696	31.8	ns	1322	39.7	1143	32.3	809	22.3	<0.001	3274	31.2
	Artists	506	9.8	1447	27.1	<0.001	700	21.0	677	19.1	576	15.9	<0.001	1953	18.6
	Individual sports	738	14.3	634	11.9	<0.001	358	10.7	467	13.2	547	15.1	<0.001	1372	13.1
	Team sports	1416	27.4	515	9.7	<0.001	519	15.6	673	19.0	739	20.4	<0.001	1931	18.4
	Inactive	932	18.0	1041	19.5	ns	433	13.0	581	16.4	959	26.4	<0.001	1973	18.8
Number of activities	1 activity	2142	41.4	1818	34.1	<0.001	1129	33.9	1365	38.5	1466	40.4	<0.001	3960	37.7
	2 activities	1245	24.1	1447	27.1	<0.001	959	28.8	917	25.9	816	22.5	<0.001	2692	25.6
	3 activities	551	10.7	730	13.7	<0.001	519	15.6	483	13.6	279	7.7	<0.001	1281	12.2
	4 activities	198	3.8	207	3.9	ns	205	6.2	127	3.6	73	2.0	<0.001	405	3.9
	5 activities	64	1.2	67	1.3	ns	67	2.0	44	1.2	20	0.6	<0.001	131	1.2
	6 activities	38	0.7	23	0.4	<0.05	20	0.6	24	0.7	17	0.5	ns	61	0.6

% represents the percentage of respondents within the column concerned (gender, age, total) who participated in the given activity or belonged to the particular cluster
ns not significant
^a the ‘Active’ category in the middle section of the Table represents all the adolescents participating in at least one organized leisure-time activity and is, thus, equal to a sum of the four clusters - All-rounders, Artists, Individual sports and Team sports

ISSN: 1471-2458