Physical growth and health related physical fitness in adolescents of differents socio economic status

Resumen

This study had as objective to compare: the physical growth through the body mass (BM), stature and body mass index (BMI) between sex and socio-economic status (SES) by age; the health-related physical fitness (HRPF) between gender and SES; the HRPF for sex and SES with the criterion-referenced proposed by AAHPERD (1988). The sample was composed by 191 boys and 212 girls, with ages between 14.49 and 17.50 years, self-evaluated in 4 or 5 TANNER (1962) stages, students from public and private school from Luis Eduardo Magalhães - BA. The SES classification was made by ANEP (1996) questionnaire, adapted to the high, intermediate and low SES. The HRPF components were measured by the respective tests: body fat (sum of the triceps and calf skinfolds); aerobic endurance (run/walk 1600m); muscular strength/endurance (abdominal); upper body muscular strength/endurance (modified pull-up) and flexibility (sit and reach). The analysis of the data was made through the descriptive statistics, analysis of variance one-way and the Scheffé’s post-hoc test (p < .05). The results indicated that in all ages the boys showed significantly a higher BM and stature (p < .05) than the girls and the BMI at 17 years, as well. The boys of high and intermediate SES had presented the BM significantly bigger (p < .05) in relation to low SES, at 15 and 17 years old, respectively. The 17-years-old boys, on the high and intermediate SES, and the15 years old girls, on the intermediate SES, had presented greater (p < .05) statures than the respective pairs of the low SES. The HRPF of the boys was better (p < .05) than the girls; the boys of the high SES have more body fat than the boys of the intermediate and low SES. Around 94% of the boys and 97% of the girls had not reached the criterion-referenced. Therefore, the conclusion are: the boys tend to grow more than the girls; these differ (p < .05) from the girls in the HRPF and, the different SES do not seem to influence in the HRPF; the physical growth may have been influenced negatively by the low SES; only 6% of the boys and 3% of the girls are not exposed to the possible development of non-transmissible chronic diseases due to low HRPF.