Physical activity and quality of life in schoolchildren aged 11–13 years of Cuenca, Spain

This study examined the differences in quality of life (QoL) between active and sedentary schoolchildren and analyzed these differences by gender and weight status. A total of 1409 children, aged 11-13 years, from 20 schools located in 20 municipalities of the province of Cuenca were invited to participate in a cross-sectional study; 1073 children agreed (76.15% response rate), of which 536 (49.9%) were boys. QoL was measured with Child Health and Illness Profile-Child Edition (CHIP-CE), an instrument measuring children's perception of their own health using a Likert-type scale with five dimensions: satisfaction, comfort, resilience, risk avoidance, and achievement. Multivariate analysis of variance using the scores of the different CHIP-CE dimensions as dependent variables, physical activity, gender, and body mass index (BMI) category as fixed factors, and age as co-variate showed the following: (1) the scores of active children were significantly better than the scores of sedentary children for every dimension except risk avoidance; (2) there were no significant differences in QoL by BMI category; and (3) girls had better mean scores than boys for resilience, risk avoidance, and achievement, and worse scores for comfort. These results suggest that active children have a better QoL and that gender differences favoring boys diminish or even reverse to favor active girls.