Globally accepted recommendations for physical activity of children and youth state that children should engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity at least for 60 minutes daily. Referring to different reports in Europe less than 50 % of children and youth is sufficiently active. According to World Health Organization less than 80 % of children achieve the recommendations. There are generally accepted ideas among researchers that level of physical activity is decreasing with age and that boys are more active than girls. The aim of our study is to investigate longitudinal changes in physical activity in children between the ages of 11 and 14 and observe gender differences. Total 114 children took part of our research at the age of 11. There were 90, 88 and 50 children at age 12, 13 and 14 respectively. There were nine participants who were measured at all of the ages. We used SenseWear Pro3, multi-sensor accelerometer for measuring physical activity. It collected data at 60 s epoch. We defined moderate activity with 4 MET and vigorous with 7 MET. For statistical analysis, we used two- way mixed ANOVA as a test for repeated measures. We observed significant differences in total physical activity (TPA) between age groups of 11 and 14 (p = 0,006; -2,34 h) and between age groups of 12 and 14 (p = 0,016; - 0,62 h). There were no significant differences observed in average intensity of TPA between different age groups F(3, 21) = 1,576, p = 0,225. The same goes for differences in moderate to vigorous activity F(3, 21) = 1,232, p = 0,323 and sedentary activity F(3, 21) = 1,207, p = 0,323. Also, there were no significant gender differences in sedentary activity F(1, 7) = 0,318, p = 0,590. Due to considerable drop out of measured children and small final sample avaliable for longitudinal analysis, we can not generalize our findings. Nevertheless findings can be useful for school or home-based physical activity initiatives. Additionally, we see our study as good basis for further research of physical activity in Slovenian children.
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