LIKES Research Institute, Jyväskylä, Finland.
Obes Facts. 2009;2(3):187-95. doi: 10.1159/000222244. Epub 2009 Jun 12.
The aim of the article was to review studies on the tracking of physical activity in all phases of life from childhood to late adulthood. The majority of the studies have been published since 2000. The follow-up time in most studies was short, the median being 9 years. In men, the stability of physical activity was significant but low or moderate during all life phases and also in longterm follow-ups. In women, the tracking was lower and in many cases non-significant. Among both sexes, stability seems to be lower in early childhood than in adolescence or in adulthood and lower in transitional phases, such as from childhood to adolescence or from adolescence to adulthood, than in adulthood. However, the differences in the stability of physical activity between age groups and between different phases of life were small. The number of tracking studies utilising objective methods to measure physical activity was so small that systematic differences in stability between self-report and objective methods could not be determined. A factor which caused differences in tracking results was the adjustment of correlations for measurement error and other error variance. Adjusted coefficients were clearly higher than unadjusted ones. However, adjustment was done only in very few studies. If the different methods used for estimating habitual physical activity and the failure to control for important covariates in studies of tracking are taken into account, physical activity appears to track reasonably well also in the longer term, for example from adolescence to adulthood. The results of the tracking studies support the idea that the enhancement of physical activity in children and adolescents is of great importance for the promotion of public health.
本文旨在回顾从儿童期到成年后期各个生命阶段的身体活动追踪研究。大多数研究都是在 2000 年后发表的。大多数研究的随访时间都较短，中位数为 9 年。在男性中，身体活动的稳定性在所有生命阶段都显著，但较低或中等，长期随访也是如此。在女性中，追踪性较低，在许多情况下不显著。在两性中，稳定性似乎在儿童早期比青春期或成年期低，在过渡阶段（如从儿童期到青春期或从青春期到成年期）比成年期低。然而，身体活动稳定性在年龄组和生命不同阶段之间的差异很小。利用客观方法测量身体活动的追踪研究数量如此之少，以至于无法确定自我报告和客观方法之间的稳定性是否存在系统差异。导致追踪结果差异的一个因素是对相关性进行调整以消除测量误差和其他误差方差。调整后的系数明显高于未调整的系数。然而，只有极少数研究进行了调整。如果考虑到用于估计习惯性身体活动的不同方法以及在追踪研究中未控制重要协变量的因素，那么身体活动在较长时间内（例如从青春期到成年期）也能很好地进行追踪。这些追踪研究的结果支持了这样一种观点，即增强儿童和青少年的身体活动对于促进公众健康非常重要。
