Comparison of physical activity’s level in relationship to the gender of elderly people from elderly society groups

Abstract

This study aimed analyzes the physical activity levels (mainly sedentary and very physically active) of elderly, as to locate possible differences between the sample’s gender. It’s an epidemic transverse descriptive research. The population was composed by 1.652 older people from 37 Elderly Society Groups from São José city, SC, Brazil. The sample was probabilistic, with random selection, and was composed by 262 participants of these groups. The instruments used in data collection were: Form for identification data; International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), version 8, forms long and normal week. The data were stored in statistic program SPSS 13.0, and treated with descriptive and inferencial statistics, to compare means (Kruskal-Wallis test) with an adopted significant level of 5%. It was observed that 86,7% of study subjects were very active, with 83,8% of men and 89,5% of women classified like very active. Women showed themselves more activity than men (p=0,014), because, mainly, to the fact of then had very superior domestic activities’ means than men (p<0,001). Subjects from this study were classified as very active physically. The observed differences between the gender point that women are more active than men, mainly because their superior participation on domestic activities.