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BOX 2-3 Continued

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Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School
Status and Trends of Physical Activity Behaviors and Related School Policies
 
49
FIGURE 2-3
Average minutes/day of accelerometer-measured vigorous- or moderate- 
intensity physical activity by years of age and source.
NOTE: NHANES = National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
SOURCES: Nader et al., 2008; Troiano et al., 2008.
Figure 2-3.eps
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
9
11
12
15
6-11
12-15
16-19
Av
erage Minutes per Da
y
Study of Early Child Care and
Development (Nader et al., 2008)
NHANES
(Troiano et al., 2008)
do or do not achieve a set number of minutes, as presented in Figures 2-1 
and 2-2. These three figures illustrate some of the difficulties entailed in 
comparing studies that used different measurement methods (i.e., self-
report versus accelerometer-measured) and different types of data summary 
(i.e., proportion meeting a specific standard versus average of the whole 
group).
In addition to the low proportion of children and adolescents meeting 
currently recommended physical activity levels and the decline in vigorous- 
or moderate-intensity physical activity with age, data from the above and 
other surveys indicate, almost without exception, that girls are less active 
than boys (see Figure 2-4). Patterns of activity by race/ethnicity are less 
clear. Large surveys (e.g., YRBS, Monitoring the Future) using self-reported 
information usually find that whites report more vigorous- or moderate-
intensity physical activity than other racial/ethnic groups (Simons-Morton 
et al., 1997; Delva et al., 2006; CDC, 2012a). In the National Health and 
Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), however, in which physical 
activity is assessed using accelerometers, non-Hispanic blacks are the group 
with the most vigorous- or moderate-intensity physical activity (Troiano et 
al., 2008; Gortmaker et al., 2012). In a study of 6th-grade girls from six 
states, also using accelerometers to assess physical activity, white girls had 
the highest average number of minutes of vigorous- or moderate-intensity 
physical activity, while African American girls had the highest prevalence 
of meeting physical activity recommendations (Pate et al., 2006b). An 

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Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School
50