Level of physical activity of a male prison population measured with the IPAQ questionnaire.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the level of physical activity of a male prison population measured with the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), correlating years of sentence and age range.

MATERIAL AND METHOD: Non-experimental cross-sectional and descriptive study. The data was collected through the short version IPAQ questionnaire. The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation, and an inferential analysis was carried out, with a P ≥ 0.05.

RESULTS: The questionnaire was applied to a sample of 100 male prisoners from the city of Talca, Chile. They were grouped firstly into years of sentence and then by age range, obtaining a result from the evaluated population that shows moderate level of physical activity despite the context of confinement, in which walking is the activity that generates more MET's among the sample. There are no significant differences between the evaluated groups.

DISCUSSION: The evaluated population shows a lower level of physical activity than a similar group in other countries, although they show better levels of physical activity when they are compared to the Chilean general public. Walking, which prisoners do every day in the modules and shared spaces in prison, is found to be a protective factor against chronic non-communicable diseases.