Will they stay fit and healthy? A three-year follow-up evaluation of a physical activity and health intervention in Polish youth

Aims: In this paper we evaluate the sustainability of changes of involvement in physical activity. The paper examines the effectiveness of a model aiming at influencing the frequency of leisuretime physical activity, physical fitness and body constituency in youth. Methods: The baseline of this study was a randomly selected sample of 13 year olds who participated in an intervention programme carried out in three schools in Poznan in 2005-08. From a total of 199 adolescent boys a subsample of 38 individuals from the experimental group and 34 from the control group were followed for 15 months after the interventional programme finished. From 170 girls, a subsample of 33 from the experimental group and 32 girls from the control group were also randomly selected for the follow-up study. Among the variables monitored were: physical fitness, body constituency, and frequency of leisuretime physical activity. All the variables were monitored in pre-test, post-test and follow-up examinations. Results: It was established that 15 months after the end of the interventional programme boys and girls from the intervention groups maintained a higher level of leisuretime physical activity than their control group peers, and similarly in the case of selected health-related components of physical fitness. No distinctive differences were found in the case of body constituency, though, apart from muscle mass and the sum of skinfolds in girls. Conclusions: The study exposed an increase in leisuretime physical activity in time and a positive influence on selected components of health-related variables. The findings confirm the effectiveness of a multi-level intervention programme involving self-determined out-of-school physical activity planning for school-age youths, indicating the importance of personal and social context.