FAMILY LEISURE AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: ALLIANCE, RIVALRY, OR INDEPENDENCE?

Leisure constitutes an ideal time and place for the development of individual potentialities that have an impact on social growth. High school students are a privileged population that can create opportunities for leisure, fostering their human potential and helping them to make decisions and act responsibly. Parents are social agents who have a great capacity to promote these situations of personal growth among adolescents. We observe the impact of physical activity on individuals' quality of life in their physical, psychological, and social dimensions, as well as the increased dropout of this physical exercise during adolescence, reaching its highest peak at high school age. The goal of the present article is to determine the possible association of performing or wishing to perform leisure activities with one's family with the desire to practice or the actual practice of physical activity in high school students. In this study, participants were 812 adolescents, aged between 16 and 18 years. We used the Questionnaire of Motivations, Attitudes, and Behaviors in Juvenile Physical-Sport Leisure (MACOFYD). The analysis and treatment of the data were carried out with the statistical program SPSS 19.0. An inferential analysis using the Phi coefficient was conducted to detect how and to what extent being with one's family and the desire to be with one's family are associated with the practice of physical activity and the desire to exercise. The results reveal that the collective of Riojan high school students is more active than family-oriented; moreover, girls are more familyoriented than boys. It was also verified that the desire to share and the actual sharing of free time with one's family are associated with the intention to carry out physical activity. Alliances or independence, but not rivalry, were also detected between physical activity and taking part in family activities, underlining the possibility of combining physical activity and family leisure, and even merging both options by proposing physical activities with the family. As the existence of a strong association of the internal functioning of the family with family leisure was verified, we propose to determine how cohesion, flexibility and family communication specifically condition adolescents' leisure physical activity.