Özet:

Aim: The purpose of this study is to compare the body mass index and daily steps number of secondary and high school students in Mugla region according to age and gender. Material and Methods: A total of 1851 volunteer students (682 secondary school students and 1169 high school students) participated in this study. Physical activity level was determined by measuring daily step numbers of students with a pedometer. Body mass index (kg/m2) was calculated by utilizing from height and weight measurements in order to find body composition. Acquired data was recorded in SPSS (18.0) program. In order to find a difference in body composition and physical activity level between gender, Independent t-test was applied. One-way Anova was applied in order to find the differences among ages. Tukey HSD Analysis was used to find from which age the difference stemmed from. Frequencies and percentages values were calculated to assess the number of daily steps and body mass index standards, and chi-square analysis was used to find differences according to sex. Results: As a result of the statistical analyse; statistically significant difference was found in the physical activity level of secondary school students,  it was also found both high school student’s  body composition and physical activity levels of high school students according to gender (p<0.05). While the body mass index values of both male and female students tend to increase with age, the physical activity level of both students tends to decrease with age. Statistically, a significant difference was found when the daily step count standards were compared by sex (X2=23.999 p=0.000). It was found that 65.91% (n=698) of the female students and 49.87% (n=395) of the male students were below the normal values of the daily step counts. Statistically, a significant difference was found when the body mass index standards were compared by sex (X2=15.702, p=0.000). It was seen that 16.90% of female students (n=179) and 18.81% of male students (n=149) were overweight according to body mass index value; 2.92% of female students (n=31) and 6.81% of male students (n=54) were obese compared to the body mass index value. Conclusion: Consequently; to raise awareness and acquire positive habits of children about physical activity behaviours and eating habits in early ages, it is believed that this will provide an important contribution to alleviating the problem of obesity that will arise in later years.     

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