Relationship between school and out-of-school physical activity in Chilean public school children

Introduction: School and extracurricular physical education is an opportunity to promote active lifestyle in schoolchildren, fostering healthy growth and prevention of diseases associated with physical inactivity. Objective: to compare physical activity levels inside and out of the school context, in a representative sample of school children participating in a physical activity promotion program. Methods: a total of 318 boys and girls (7 to 14 years old) participated in this study. The participants voluntarily completed the PAQC questionnaire to determine their physical activity in the last 7 days. The variables were analyzed by means of comparison of variances and means through the T-student test on the SPSS V20 software. Results: By gender, physical activity presented values similar levels, except for that performed in the afternoons, where girls were more physically active (p= .006). In addition, on Saturdays, boys performed more physical activity than girls (p = .001). Regarding activity preferences, dance activities are preferred by girls whilst boys preferred soccer (p = .000). A contribution of physical education classes in combination with the sessions from comprehensive sports academies was detected regarding total practice, the average being 4.2, meaning that the category was "high level of physical activity". Conclusion: physical education classes along with sessions from sports academies contributes positively to the total physical activity.