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Creation Date

4-19-2016

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The importance of health and physical fitness is a concern among Americans adolescents. Parents who model physical activity (PA) and show avid support for PA overall positively influences adolescent participation in the interest in PA (Martin, Ewing, & Gould, 2014). Adolescents in the mid-1990's were more PA and healthier, therefore, the current study aimed to determine if the current associations between adolescent PA and relationship with parents is found in adolescents during the mid-1990's as it is today. A secondary analysis of publically available data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health was conducted, which used a school-based, clustered sampling design to identify a nationally representative sample of 9th to 12th-grade students, with oversampling of underrepresented groups. The sample of 4,366 adolescents was comprised of 49 % male and predominately Caucasian (57%). Chi-square analyses showed a statistically significant association between sport activity involvement and closeness to their mother X2=22.83, 4 df, p=0.0001; weekly exercise and a satisfactory relationship with their father X2=20.56, 4 df, p=0.0004; and active minutes in physical education class and closeness to their father X2=20.19, 4 df, p=0.0005. Overall, the findings are consistent with the data in that PA and parental relationships are related for adolescents in the mid-1990's. The decline in adolescent health and PA over the years could be related to a decline in their parents PA during their own adolescence, therefore, resulting in not modeling PA as parents. If this is the case, one would expect to see less modeling of PA by parents to continue and a decline in adolescent physical health and fitness for generations to come without intervention. Self-esteem aids in participation of PA and overall connection to parental figures (Atkins et al., 2013). This implies that stronger family relationships, in general, will be effective to aid adolescent involvement in greater movement and physically related activities on a daily basis; thus, promoting a healthier generation for ages to come.

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