Physical Activity Levels in Physical Education Classes in a City in Southern Brazil

Abstract: The objective of this study was to estimate physical activity levels of schoolchildren during physical education classes. Thirty classes between second and fifth grades were selected from Florianópolis’ public schools, of which 13 (n=260, 50.4% boys) had attended to physical education classes. Actigraph® GT3X+ physical monitors were used to measure physical activity levels. Children wore the monitors at hip for two consecutive days in order to reduce reactivity, data from the second day was used. Data was analyzed using Actilife 5.0, with 15s epochs and cut-points by Evenson et al. (2005). Mann-Whitney and t-tests were used for independent samples whether the data was parametric or non-parametric, respectively. Differences between grades were verified by Kruskall Wallis test. Boys engaged more time than girls in MVPA (Md = 15,93% vs 10,87%; p<0,01), corresponding to 7,25 and 6,76 minutes, respectively. Girls spent more time in sedentary activities than boys, corresponding to 46,76% (±17,34) and 39,16%(±16,15) of the class duration, respectively (p<0,01). Differences between school grades were detected for sedentary and light intensities (p<0,01). No differences were found between nutritional states groups (p=0,234). Thus concludes that small time portion of the physical education class was spent in MVPA, independently of subgroups, while almost half of the time was spent in sedentary activities.