RESEARCH ARTICLE

Relations between Health Perception and Physical Self-Concept in Adolescents

The Open Sports Sciences Journal 31 December 2020 RESEARCH ARTICLE DOI: 10.2174/1875399X02013010137

Abstract

Background:

Self-rated health is influenced by personal characteristics, such as gender and age. Similarly, it seems that physical self-concept can influence this perception, being positively related to healthy habits and quality of life. Adolescence is a sensitive stage in establishing the physical self-concept as well as in health-related behaviours. Therefore, it is necessary to study these relationships since the behaviours established at these ages will have a lasting impact on life.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to analyse the relation between physical self-concept and self-rated health in adolescents.

Methods:

A sample of 1697 adolescents (824 boys; 48.5% and 873 girls; 51.5%), aged between 12 and 16 years old (14.2 ±1.0) participated in the study. For data collection, a questionnaire was used. The measured variables were perception of health, physical self-concept and gender. A chi-square test was used to analyse the data and evaluate the association between the variables, and Cramer´s V was used to quantify the degree of association. A Classification and Regression Tree (CART) evaluation was applied to discover the influence of the variables that have an effect on the perception of health.

Results:

The results show that boys perceive to have better health and greater physical self-concept than girls. Similarly, a positive relationship has been found between the health´s perception in both genders and the physical self-concept, in each of its subdomains.

Conclusion:

A positive relationship has been found between health perception and physical self-concept. Therefore, an increase in the physical self-concept is presented as an opportunity to improve health self-perception, which can positively affect the health of young people.

Keywords: Physical Education, Physical activity, Health perception, Physical self-concept, Adolescents, Healthy lifestyle.
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