The effects of adolescence sports and exercise on adulthood leisure-time physical activity in educational groups

Table 3 Characteristics of the participants by age, gender and educational group^a. Values are proportions (%) or medians (Me)

	25-44 age-group	45-64 age-group	Men	Women	Low education	High education	P-value^f for age differences	P-value^f for gender differences	P-value^f for educational differences
Opinions on PE^b:
a) PE was interesting and pleasant (%)							<0.001	<0.001	<0.001
I disagree	28	19	14	31	13	29
I somewhat agree	39	35	37	38	35	39
I entirely agree	32	46	49	32	52	32
b) I learned useful physical activity skills in PE classes (%)							<0.001	<0.001	<0.001
I disagree	27	22	18	29	18	28
I somewhat agree	46	44	47	42	46	44
I entirely agree	27	35	34	29	36	29
Participation in competitive sports in youth (%)^c:
Running	8	7	9	7	8	8	0.095	0.006	0.744
Cross-country skiing	10	13	14	10	13	10	0.025	<0.001	0.006
Track and field	7	6	8	5	5	7	0.281	<0.001	0.023
Exercise in late adolescence (%) ^d							<0.001	<0.001	<0.001
Once a week or less	22	29	23	27	30	23
2-3 times a week	39	32	33	37	32	37
4-5 times a week	23	21	24	20	21	22
>5 times a week	16	18	20	15	17	17
Leisure-time physical activity, METh/week, [Me ^e ]	19.7 [10;35]	18.9 [9;34]	19.1 [8;35]	19.4 [10;34]	16.3 [7;32]	20.9 [11;35]	0.014	<0.001	<0.001

^a The cut-off point for educational group analyses was those who had not graduated from senior high school (low education) and those who had senior high school degree (high education)
^b PE = Physical Education
^c Participants who had started competitive sports before the age of 15
^d Participants 's participation in exercise when they were aged 15 to 24 years
^e 25th and 75th percentile are presented in brackets [25th percentile,75th percentile]
^f P-values from Chi² test

ISSN: 1479-5868