This study examined differences in physical activity levels between adolescent males and females with and without disabilities using data from the 2017 Finnish School Health Promotion Study. The study found that males were more likely to meet physical activity recommendations compared to females. Among inactive youth, females reported participating in more physical activity than males. Additionally, adolescents with certain disabilities like seeing or hearing difficulties did not necessarily have lower physical activity levels than peers without disabilities. The study provides insight into targeting physical activity interventions for specific subgroups.

1. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
International Symposium of Adapted Physical Activity, 17th June 2019, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Kwok Ng, School of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland; Department of Physical
Education and Sport Sciences, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Päivi Sainio, Nina Halme, Finnish National Health and Welfare Institute, Helsinki, Finland
Cindy Sit, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Differences in physical activity between
adolescent males and females with and
without disabilities: Results of the
Finnish School Health Promotion Study.

2. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Background
•The Physical Activity Report card
system confirms that increasing
physical activity is a top research
priority especially among children and
adolescents
•Despite a call for more report cards to
include data on children and
adolescents with disabilities
(Tremblay et al, 2016), only two of the
49 countries have done this in Global
Matrix 3.0 (Aubert S, et al, 2018)
Report Card categories, Burghard et al, 2018
@kwokwng #isapa2019

3. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Definitions for being physically active
• The WHO recommendations on physical activity for
health for children and adolescents aged 5-17 years
old is; at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous
physical activity every day (2010).
• Adolescents who met this recommendation are
considered as active, and despite the fact that they
may be active from 1-6 days per week, they are still
classified as ‘inactive’ (WHO, 2011).
• Therefore, health promotion activities have the
impossible, and perhaps dangerous task to get more
people physically active.
• This is important when promoting people with
disabilities to be physically active.
@kwokwng #isapa2019

4. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Differences between males and females
•During adolescences, males are more active than
females (Kalman et al, 2015) and this is also
evident among adolescents with disabilities (Ng et
al, 2016).
•Many physical activity interventions have targeted
specifically girls (Carlin et al, 2018,Sebire et al,
2018), and for adolescents with disabilities these
interventions are increasing (McPherson et al,
2019).
•The power calculations tend to be based on
increasing PA levels by 10% (Sebire et al, 2018),
and the aim is not to get people to reach the 7 days
of MVPA recommendation immediately.
@kwokwng #isapa2019

5. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Study aims
•Therefore, this study has two main purposes
1. To study the physically active adolescents after disaggregating by
disability
2. To study the differences in physical activity between males and
females of the inactive group
@kwokwng #isapa2019

6. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Methods
•The 2017 School Health Promotion Study is a complete enumeration
study taken place in Finland during the spring of 2017.
•Data was collected voluntarily, anonymously, and it was possible to
withdraw at any time during the survey completion
•The study was approved by the National Institute for Health and
Welfare ethics committee.
•Only data from the adolescents (n=142,350) were included.
•After cleaning the file from missing age, sex, lack of disability data,
and spoilt responses (repeated extreme functional difficulties) the final
analyses sample was n=128,803.
@kwokwng #isapa2019

7. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Measures
•Disability Measures
– Self-report adaptation of Washington
Group on Disability Statistics
• Seeing
• Hearing
• Walking 500m
• Remembering
• Learning
• Concentration
– Cut off “at least some difficulties”
@kwokwng #isapa2019

8. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Measures
•Physical Activity
– Single item measure PACE+ (Number of days in the past week of at least
60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day)
•Covariates
– Sex
– Age
– School type
– Family Financial Situation
@kwokwng #isapa2019

9. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Analyses of sex and disability
•‘Active’ prevalence
– Binary logistic regression
•‘Inactive’ differences
– Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA)
– Equivalence testing
•Adjusted after age, school type and family financial situation
@kwokwng #isapa2019

10. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Overall results of ‘Active’ Youth
OR LCI UCI
Sex
Male 1.475 1.430 1.522
Female 1.0 (Ref)
Age
14 1.0 (Ref)
15 0.778 0.745 0.813
16 0.747 0.706 0.792
17 0.698 0.646 0.754
18 0.630 0.574 0.692
19 0.754 0.656 0.867
School Type
General Upper 1.0 (Ref)
Vocational 0.800 0.749 0.853
High 0.715 0.667 0.766
Family Financial Situation
Poor 1.0 (Ref)
Fairly poor 0.713 0.609 0.834
Moderate 0.769 0.666 0.889
Fairly good 0.892 0.773 1.029
Very good 1.419 1.229 1.639
@kwokwng #isapa2019

11. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Odds Ratio of Active Adolescents
reference 1.0 (without disabilities)
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12. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Sex differences between ‘inactive youth’
0
1
2
3
4
Daysperweek(max7)
Male Female
***
*** ***
*** ***
**
*** p<.001 **; p<.01; * p<.05; ns = not statistically significant
ns
ns
@kwokwng #isapa2019

13. UEF // University of Eastern Finland
Discussion
•Data on physical activity was disaggregated by
disability through a self-report version of the
Washington group whereby much more females
(17%) reported disabilities than males (10%).
•Although more males who reported to meet the
PA recommendations, inactive girls reported to
take part in more physical activity than inactive
boys
•Not all adolescents with disabilities, took part in
less daily MVPA, i.e. differences in daily MVPA
among seeing and hearing difficulties were no
significant to same age peers without disabilities
@kwokwng #isapa2019

14. UEF // University of Eastern Finland @kwokwng #isapa2019 14

15. Thank you!
uef.fi
https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/research-and-
expertwork/population-studies/school-health-promotion-
study
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