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영어

Purpose: Adolescent obesity is a growing problem. This study examined the relationships between different types of physical activity and obesity in male and female middle and high school students. Methods: This study used the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data of 2007. The study included 282 male and female middle and high school students who completed health survey questionnaires regarding physical activity. Physical activity was measured with vigorous and moderate activity and walking. BMI was used as an obesity indicator. Analyses were done using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and chi-square test. In addition, multiple logistic regression were conducted to investigate the relationship between physical activity and obesity when adjusting for covariates. SAS/WIN 9.1 was used. Results: Boys spent more days in vigorous and moderate physical activity than girls (p for vigorous activity: <.001, for moderate activity: <.001). There was no significant difference in walking activity between boys and girls and between middle and high school students. Only days spent in vigorous activity was significantly higher in middle school student compared with high school students (p=.013). According to the relationship between physical activity and obesity, moderate physical activity was significantly related to BMI for high school boys (p=.041). However, when adjusting for age, sex, school, parental income, daily caloric intake, physical activity was not significantly related to obesity. Conclusions: The results showed that male and female middle and high school students spent not enough days in doing low moderate and vigorous physical activity. Thus, this strengthens the need to increase physical activity level in these populations. In spite of non-significant relationship between physical activity and obesity from multivariate analysis, increasing moderate physical activity for high school boy could be effective to prevent and manage obesity, since significant difference between moderate activity and obesity in this population.