Abstract
Active commuting to and from school can be an important contribution to improving health in adolescents. This study aimed to analyze the influence of multilevel variables of the ecological model in the active commuting of a representative sample of Portuguese adolescents. The 2018 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children questionnaire was applied to 5695 adolescents with an average age of 15.5 years old (SD ± 1.8), 53.9% of whom were girls. The associations were studied by applying chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression models. In this study, 36.5% of the participants reported walking or cycling to school. Active commuting to school was directly associated with age (OR = 1.2; p < 0.05), strong family support (OR = 1.2; p < 0.05), a moderate to low financial level of the family (OR = 1.3; p < 0.05) and living near the school (OR = 2.4; p < 0.05). The results revealed that an adolescent’s choice to travel to and from school using an active mode of transportation increased with strong family support. As a result, promotion campaigns should consider the adolescent’s family context.
Highlights
Physical activity (PA) is an important behavior for the health of adolescents and for a healthy lifestyle [1]
The results suggest that Active commuting (AC) tends to be higher in older adolescents, adolescents with stronger family support, a lower financial level of the family, and in those who lived near the school
We found that the perception of a lower financial level of the family increased the adoption of AC
Summary
Physical activity (PA) is an important behavior for the health of adolescents and for a healthy lifestyle [1]. Several studies have provided compelling evidence that regular PA produces health benefits, such as mental health benefits [2], reduction in cardiovascular risk factors [3], physical fitness and well-being [4], and social health benefits [5]. A review [6] confirmed the impact of moderate- to vigorous-intensity PA on brain health, especially in the neurophysiological and structural aspects of the human brain, such as improved brain plasticity, through changes in brain-derived neurotrophic factor, functional connectivity, basal ganglia, and the hippocampus. It is estimated that only some adolescents (19%) are active enough [7] to achieve the recommendation of 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) a day [8]. Active commuting (AC), which can be defined as the use of active means such as walking and cycling, is considered an important means for the accumulation of PA and
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