Exercise Participation in Adolescents and Their Pa

Authors: Marleen H M De Moor Gonneke Willemsen Irene RebolloMesa Janine H Stubbe Eco J C De Geus Dorret I Boomsma

Publish Date: 2010/11/18

Volume: 41, Issue: 2, Pages: 211-222

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Abstract

Individual differences in adolescent exercise behavior are to a large extent explained by shared environmental factors The aim of this study was to explore to what extent this shared environment represents effects of cultural transmission of parents to their offspring generation specific environmental effects or assortative mating Survey data on leisuretime exercise behavior were available from 3525 adolescent twins and their siblings 13–18 years and 3138 parents from 1736 families registered at the Netherlands Twin Registry Data were also available from 5471 adult twins their siblings and spouses similar in age to the parents Exercise participation No/Yes using a cutoff criterion of 4 metabolic equivalents and 60 min weekly was based on questions on type frequency and duration of exercise A model to analyze dichotomous data from twins siblings and parents including differences in variance decomposition across sex and generation was developed Data from adult twins and their spouses were used to investigate the causes of assortative mating correlation between spouses = 041 due to phenotypic assortment The heritability of exercise in the adult generation was estimated at 42 The shared environment for exercise behavior in adolescents mainly represents generation specific shared environmental influences that seem somewhat more important in explaining familial clustering in girls than in boys 52 versus 41 A small effect of vertical cultural transmission was found for boys only 3 The remaining familial clustering for exercise behavior was explained by additive genetic factors 42 in boys and 36 in girls Future studies on adolescent exercise behavior should focus on identification of the generation specific environmental factors

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