The study of Iranian children and adolescents' physical activity: a systematic review and meta-analysis

This systematic and meta-analysis review was conducted to determine the status of Iranian children and adolescents' physical activity.

All the related articles which were published in the major databases, including Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, Magiran, SID from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2019, were reviewed by researchers. The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was also used to evaluate the quality of articles. Moreover, I ² index and chi-square were used to assess the heterogeneity between the results.

490 articles were found as a result of the search in the selected international and local databases, where finally, 10 articles were included into the meta-analysis after the elimination of the duplicated articles and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. The results indicated that 29.5% of the girls were considered active according to WHO criteria (16.1-42.8: 95% CI) and also 20.5% of the boys (7.3-33.7: 95% CI).

Overall, this study's findings showed that a large percentage of Iranian children and adolescents do not achieve the level of physical activity recommended by the World Health Organization. This can lead to undesirable consequences for this group of population that is considered as the human capital of any country; consequently, it seems necessary to take basic measures at the micro and macro levels in order to reduce such problems in the society.