2007 Volume 3 Pages 22-29
The purpose of this study was to identify the specific influence of past sports experience on establishing the habit of exercise in Japanese high school students. The participants were 2,725 (male: 58.0%) high school students in Japan. Survey items included current exercise habit (frequency, and duration), and past sports experience (number of sports events [NSE], commencing time of sports [CTS], and time spent per week [TS/wk]). An exercise habit was defined the implementation of exercise three or more days/wk and one or more hrs/day. Data were randomly split into sample A and B halves. Forty seven percent of the participants were included in the exercise habit group. From the result of a classification and regression tree (CART) analysis for sample A, the rule of the highest ratio of the exercise habit group (72.9%) was NSE > 2 events, and TS/wk > 6.9 hrs. From the result of a CART analysis for sample B, the rule of the highest ratio of the exercise habit group (76.3%) was NSE > 2 events, and TS/wk > 8.3 hrs. Split sequences indicated the same results between the samples. The results of logistic regression analysis using each sample indicated that NSE and TS/wk were statistically significant in both samples. Therefore, the study, although limited to statistical methods and characteristics of samples, suggested that a requirement for establishing exercise habits in youth was NSE > 2 events, and TS/wk > 6.9-8.3 hrs before entering senior high school.
