ArticleBritish journal of sports medicine2005
Does living in urban or rural settings affect aspects of physical fitness in children? An allometric approach.
Article in British journal of sports medicine, 2005. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 71 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sex Differences in Grip Strength From Birth to Age 16: A Meta-Analysis.European journal of sport science · 2025Pooled it
- Challenges and Solutions to Supporting Physical Literacy within Youth Sport.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2025Article
- The Impact of Obesity on the Fitness Performance of School-Aged Children Living in Rural Areas-The West Attica Project.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Players at home: Physical activity and quality of life in 12-17 years-old football (soccer) players during the Covid-19 lockdown.International journal of sports science & coaching · 2022Article
- A sense of health and coherence in young rural schoolchildren in Sweden.International journal of circumpolar health · 2021Article
- Choose Where You Live Carefully: Built Environment Differences in Children's Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Cardiometabolic Risk.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Socioeconomic Determinants of the Anthropometric Characteristics and Motor Abilities of Polish Male University Students: A Cross-Sectional Study Conducted in 2000-2018.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Physical fitness and anthropometric characteristics among adolescents living in urban or rural areas of Kosovo.BMC public health · 2017Article
- Distribution of health-related physical fitness in Slovak population.SpringerPlus · 2015Article
- Effect of living area and sports club participation on physical fitness in children: a 4 year longitudinal study.BMC public health · 2014Article
- Physical fitness among urban and rural Ecuadorian adolescents and its association with blood lipids: a cross sectional study.BMC pediatrics · 2014Article
- Physical fitness and activity levels among urban school children and their rural counterparts.Indian journal of pediatrics · 2014Article
- Geography influences dietary intake, physical activity and weight status of adolescents.Journal of nutrition and metabolism · 2012Article
- Fitness, motor competence and body composition as correlates of adolescent neck/shoulder pain: an exploratory cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2008Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate physical fitness in relation to fatness in urban and rural Greek children by means of allometric scaling.
methodsThe sample consisted of 360 (189 urban and 171 rural; age 12.3+/-0.42 years) boys and 247 (125 urban and 122 rural; age 12.3+/-0.43 years) girls. The sample was highly representative (32-64%) of all 12 year old children registered in the prefecture of Trikala, Greece. All volunteers were assessed for BMI and % body fat, as well as sit and reach, basketball throw (BT), vertical jump (VJ), handgrip strength (HG), 40 m sprint, agility run, and 20 m shuttle run. To correct for possible associations between fatness and fitness, a single cause allometric scaling was employed using the natural logarithms (ln) of fitness parameters that were significantly correlated with the ln body fat.
resultsIndependent-samples t tests revealed that VJ (p<0.05) was significantly higher in boys living in urban settings compared to their rural counterparts. Similarly, BT was found to be significantly better (p<0.05) in urban girls, whereas HG was significantly higher (p<0.05) in rural girls.
conclusionConsidering that (a) only three out of the 14 possible cases (seven fitness parameters for boys and seven for girls) were significantly different between urban and rural children, and (b) these differences were not uniformly distributed in children living in either urban or rural environments, it is concluded that the place of residence has no clear impact on physical fitness as studied herein.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.