RT Journal Article
T1 Percentiles and Principal Component Analysis of Physical Fitness From a Big Sample of Children and Adolescents Aged 6-18 Years: The DAFIS Project.
A1 Iglesias-Soler, Eliseo
A1 Rúa-Alonso, María
A1 Lete-Lasa, José Ramón
A1 Giráldez-García, Manuel Avelino
A1 Rodríguez-Corral, Miguel
A1 Carballeira-Fernández, Eduardo
A1 Dopico-Calvo, Xurxo
A1 Rial Vázquez, Jessica
A1 Rico Díaz, Javier
K1 Health-related fitness
K1 Adolescents
K1 Children
K1 Cardiorespiratory fitness
K1 Anthropometry
K1 Muscular fitness
K1 Motor fitness
K1 Percentiles
AB Assessing physical fitness has emerged as a proxy of the health status of children and adolescents and therefore as relevant from a public health point of view. DAFIS is a project included in Plan Galicia Saudable (Healthy Galicia Plan) of the regional government of Galicia (Spain). DAFIS consists of an on-line software devoted to record the results of a standard physical fitness protocol carried out as a part of the physical education curriculum. The aims of this study were: to obtain normative values of physical fitness of the Galician school population evaluated in the DAFIS project, and to identify a reduced number of components and tests able to capture a significant amount of the variability in the physical fitness of children and adolescents. From an initial sample of 27784 records, 15287 cases (7543 males, 7744 females) were considered after filtering. Generalized Additive Models for Location, Scale and Shape were used for obtaining percentile curves and tables for each sex. Furthermore, a principal components analysis was performed, selecting the number of components by applying the Kaiser’s rule and selecting a subset of variables considering the correlation between each variable and the components. Percentile curves and normative values are reported for each test and sex. Physical fitness was better in boys than in girls throughout age groups, except for flexibility that was consistently higher in girls. Two main components were detected throughout age groups: the first one representing body composition and partially cardiorespiratory fitness and the second one muscular fitness. For boys and girls, waist to height ratio had the highest correlations with the first component in four out of six age groups. The highest correlation with the second component, was most frequently observed for the handgrip test both in boys and girls (four out of six agegroups). This study provides evidence about the utility of school community actions like DAFIS aimed to track the health-related fitness of children and adolescents. The results suggest that fat mass distribution (i.e., waist to height ratio and waist circumference) and muscular performance (mainly handgrip) concentrate a high proportion physical fitness variance.
PB Frontiers
YR 2021
FD 2021-02-19
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/32292
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/32292
LA eng
NO Iglesias-Soler, E., Rúa-Alonso, M., Rial-Vázquez, J., Lete-Lasa, J.R., Clavel, I., Giráldez-García, M.A., Rico-Díaz, J., Corral, M., Carballeira-Fernández, E. & Dopico-Calvo, X. (2021). Percentiles and Principal Component Analysis of Physical Fitness From a Big Sample of Children and Adolescents Aged 6-18 Years: The DAFIS Project. Front. Psychol. 12:627834. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.627834
NO This work was supported by the “Fundación deportegalego” throughout the Cátedra SXD Galicia Activa 2018-2020.
DS Minerva
RD 24 abr 2026