Leisure-time, occupational, and household physical activity among professional, skilled, and less-skilled workers and homemakers

Background. Adults in lower status occupations are at higher risk of premat ure cardiovascular disease, for which physical inactivity is a major risk f actor. While lower rates of leisure-time physical activity have been found to be associated consistently with lower income and education levels, the a ssociation between occupational and home-based physical activity with membe rship of different occupational categories is not well understood. Methods. An urban-representative population data set derived from a sell-co mpletion questionnaire was used to examine both self-reported leisure-time physical activity and a combined measure of occupational/home-based physica l activity of adult less-skilled, skilled, and professional workers and hom emakers (3795 males; 4140 females). chi(2) analyses, ANOVA, and logistic re gressions were used to examine the associations between occupational group membership and physical activity. Results. After adjustment for age, body mass index, education, country of b irth, marital status, and smoking, less-skilled workers were less likely to report any form of leisure-time physical activity. However, occupational c ategory was not a strong predictor of participation in combined vigorous oc cupational/home physical activity. Homemakers and those in lower status occ upations were less likely to report participation in vigorous leisure-time physical activity sufficient for cardiorespiratory fitness. With the inclus ion of time spent in combined vigorous occupational/home physical activity, there was no longer an association of activity with occupational status fo r males. However, for females the association remained. Conclusions. The assessment of occupational and household physical activity in addition to leisure-time activity may be important for understanding as sociations between occupational categories, physical activity, and increase d levels of health risk and for the development of physical activity promot ion strategies. (C) 2000 American Health Foundation and Academic Press.