Health development with emphasis on tendency for participant in leisure time physical activity and playing digital games in adolescents

Background & Purpose: The aim of the present study was to investigate health improvement with emphasis on tendency for participating in leisure time physical activity and playing digital games in male and female adolescents of Tehran City. Subjects included 300 male and female students that were selected according to the Morgan table from three grads of I, II, and III in Tehran high schools. In this study, a standard questionnaire of Leung Cho (2009) was used. Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the questionnaire for the public health problems of adolescents was obtained α=0.77 and the reliability of factors involved in digital games was obtained α =0.78. For data analysis, the Pearson correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between variables and the independent t-test was used to compare variables between male and female subjects. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between motivation of participation in digital games and time spend in these games (p<0.05). Also, there were significant differences in health problems and physical activity in leisure time between males and females (p<0.05), but there was no significant difference in doing digital games between male and females. The results show the importance of physical activities in students' leisure time and based on these results, it can be concluded that leisure time physical activity may reduce health problems in both male and female students.