A Physical Activity And Lifestyle Education Intervention In Irish Adolescent Females

Abstract

It has been widely reported that adolescents are not meeting physical activity (PA) guidelines with females often being highlighted as most 'at risk'. The Irish Obesity Taskforce Report 2005 recommended the development of "opportunities for physical activity…that concentrate on increasing physical activity among teenage girls". PURPOSE: To engage a group of 'at risk' adolescent females (age 16yr 3mo±8mo) in a PA and lifestyle education (LE) intervention which would increase their Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA) during and also outside the intervention. METHODS: Participants were randomly allocated to an intervention (n=17) and a control (n=16) group. The intervention group undertook a 32 week PA and LE intervention for 40 minutes 3 times a week. The PA component consisted of activities chosen by the participants (aerobics, kick boxing etc) and the LE component consisted of standard psychological tools such as goal setting and barrier identification. Pre and post tests included two body composition measures, 20 meter shuttle run to estimate VO2max and a 3-5 day measure of PA using recording accelerometry. Accelerometry counts were recorded, and data was processed to identify continuous blocks of MVPA over 10 minutes duration. RESULTS: The intervention did not alter either body composition measures. Estimated VO2max of the intervention group increased significantly (p<0.001, t-test) from 27.6 (± 3.6) to 33.6 (± 4.7) ml.kg-1.min-1whilst the control group showed no significant change. PA levels were determined to be below the acceptable level in both groups at pre test (which is as expected since they were chosen due to their sedentary patterns). PA levels increased significantly at the end of the intervention (p<0.01, t-test) in the intervention group with average minutes of PA per day increasing from 11 (±7) to 20 (±15) minutes. The control group showed no significant change in MVPA levels. PA patterns were also analysed. CONCLUSION: The PA intervention significantly increased participants PA levels but not enough to reach adult (ACSM,2007) or child (NASPE, 2005) recommendations. The increase is noteworthy since the group started from a sedentary base and this is combined with an increase in cardiovascular fitness. Data suggests that this type of targeted school based intervention may be successful.