Exercise Physiology Laboratory, Department of Physical Education and Movement Sciences, College of Education, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes. 2011;4:417-26. doi: 10.2147/DMSO.S26676. Epub 2011 Dec 20.
There is a lack of comparable data on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and dietary habits among Arab adolescents, which limits our understanding and interpretation of the relationship between obesity and lifestyle parameters. Therefore, we initiated the Arab Teens Lifestyle Study (ATLS). The ATLS is a multicenter collaborative project for assessing lifestyle habits of Arab adolescents. The objectives of the ATLS project were to investigate the prevalence rates for overweight and obesity, physical activity, sedentary activity and dietary habits among Arab adolescents, and to examine the interrelationships between these lifestyle variables. This paper reports on the objectives, design, methodology, and implications of the ATLS.
DESIGN/METHODS: The ATLS is a school-based cross-sectional study involving 9182 randomly selected secondary-school students (14-19 years) from major Arab cities, using a multistage stratified sampling technique. The participating Arab cities included Riyadh, Jeddah, and Al-Khobar (Saudi Arabia), Bahrain, Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Kuwait, Amman (Jordan), Mosel (Iraq), Muscat (Oman), Tunisia (Tunisia) and Kenitra (Morocco). Measured variables included anthropometric measurements, physical activity, sedentary behavior, sleep duration, and dietary habits.
The ATLS project will provide a unique opportunity to collect and analyze important lifestyle information from Arab adolescents using standardized procedures. This is the first time a collaborative Arab project will simultaneously assess broad lifestyle variables in a large sample of adolescents from numerous urbanized Arab regions. This joint research project will supply us with comprehensive and recent data on physical activity/inactivity and eating habits of Arab adolescents relative to obesity. Such invaluable lifestyle-related data are crucial for developing public health policies and regional strategies for health promotion and disease prevention.
由于缺乏有关阿拉伯青少年体力活动、久坐行为和饮食习惯的可比数据，我们对肥胖与生活方式参数之间的关系的理解和解释受到限制。因此，我们发起了阿拉伯青少年生活方式研究（ATLS）。ATLS 是一项多中心合作项目，旨在评估阿拉伯青少年的生活方式习惯。ATLS 项目的目的是调查超重和肥胖、体力活动、久坐行为和饮食习惯在阿拉伯青少年中的流行率，并研究这些生活方式变量之间的相互关系。本文报告了 ATLS 的目的、设计、方法学和意义。
设计/方法：ATLS 是一项基于学校的横断面研究，涉及来自主要阿拉伯城市的 9182 名随机选择的中学生（14-19 岁），采用多阶段分层抽样技术。参与的阿拉伯城市包括利雅得、吉达和阿尔科巴尔（沙特阿拉伯）、巴林、迪拜（阿拉伯联合酋长国）、科威特、安曼（约旦）、摩苏尔（伊拉克）、马斯喀特（阿曼）、突尼斯（突尼斯）和肯尼特拉（摩洛哥）。测量变量包括人体测量学测量、体力活动、久坐行为、睡眠时间和饮食习惯。
ATLS 项目将提供一个独特的机会，使用标准化程序从阿拉伯青少年中收集和分析重要的生活方式信息。这是首次有一个合作的阿拉伯项目将同时评估来自众多城市化阿拉伯地区的大量青少年的广泛生活方式变量。这项联合研究项目将为我们提供有关阿拉伯青少年与肥胖相关的体力活动/不活动和饮食习惯的全面和最新数据。这种宝贵的与生活方式相关的数据对于制定公共卫生政策和区域健康促进和疾病预防策略至关重要。
