engleski

Are rural children really healthier? Case of Croatia

INTRODUCTION This study aims to determine health status of 5th to 8th grade pupils through registering health-related indicators and compares physical fitness level of students from urban areas and their peers from rural domain. METHODS Subjects were school children enrolled in grades 5th to 8th. Sample consisted of 9685 students, 4924 girls and 4761 boys from urban and rural areas of Croatia. A battery of fifteen tests was applied for the evaluation of motor abilities. Coordination, agility, flexibility, explosive and dynamic strength were estimated each with three tests. The differences between the children’s physical fitness profiles from urban and rural areas were determined using Anova. A series of t-tests for independent samples were made to compare additionally the subjects. Statistical significance was set to p < 0.05. RESULTS The results suggest that there are differences in children’s health-related physical fitness profiles depending on the rural-urban characteristics. Namely, urban male students had better results in tests for the assessment of agility, flexibility, explosive and repetitive strength than the rural male students, while the urban female students are more successful in tests of agility, flexibility and explosive strength than their peers from rural areas who performed better in flexibility and repetitive strength tests. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Although former researches have shown that students from urban environment hold lower level of kinantropology characteristics (Pena et al., 2003 ; Tsimeas et al., 2005 ; Ozdirenc et al., 2005 ; Felton et al., 2002) it is to assume that induction of mechanization and lower need for physical work on farms, while maintaining the nutritional habits that involve traditional, high calorie meals, also because of richer offer of organized sport events and programmes in the cities, they change mentioned state in benefit of students from urban environment.

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