semmelweis university - Faculty of Physical Education and Sport ...

Ágnes Kovács-Dániel Somoskői
Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology, Budapest, Hungary
Supervisor: Dr. Róbert Urbán, associate professor
Smoking and Physical Activity
Introduction: The Budapest adolescent smoking study is a longitudinal study on the
determinants of smoking. Our main goal was to test the cross-sectional association between
level of physical activity/inactivity and smoking.
Participants and procedure: The sample was composed of 2565 high school students (mean
age = 15.3 years, sd = 0.56 years; 1251 boys and 1314 girls). The participants were asked to
complete the questionnaire in their classrooms within one class session.
Measures: Measures included self-reported smoking, questions related to physical activity
and inactivity (time spent watching television or playing computer games). Four levels of
smoking status were identified: never tried (37.7%), experimenter (tried it but did not smoke
during the past 30 days, 31.1%), intermittent smokers (did not smoke every day during the
past 30 days, 19.7%), and regular or established smokers (smoked every day during the past
30 days, 11.5%).
Method: All statistical analyses were performed with spss 17.0. A principal component
analysis of physical activity and inactivity questions analysis revealed two principal
components, namely physical activity and physical inactivity. The two components explain
54.5% of variance. The standardized score of the components are used in latter analyses.
Analysis of variance (anova) of physical activity and inactivity. Two-way anova analyses
were performed on physical activity and physical inactivity scores.
Results: Significant main effects were found in physical activity component along gender and
smoking status (f(3)=6.2, p