Relationships between perception of Exercise Guidelines 2006, perception of other health promotion policies, and demographic variables

PURPOSE: According to the interim report of Healthy Japan 21, promoting Exercise Guideline 2006 is one important issue in the fields of physical activity and exercise. However, a previous study indicated that Japanese people rarely were aware of Exercise Guideline 2006 (Higo & Nakamura, 2008). The purpose of the present study was to identify characteristics of those who were aware of the guideline. METHODS: The subjects were 1,613 Japanese adults (40.2 +/- 12.2 years) recruited by a Japanese social research company. The study designwas cross-sectional, using an internet questionnaire. Regarding the research items, the dependent variable was awareness of Exercise Guideline 2006, and the independent variables included awareness of other health promotion policies such as Healthy Japan 21, the Japanese Nutrition Balance Guide, and the Japanese national policy for preventing metabolic syndrome, as well as demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, BMI, hours per day spent watching TV watching and hours per day with internet usage). Logistic regression analysis was used for this research. RESULTS: Of all subjects, 12.3% answered that they were aware of Exercise Guideline 2006. Those over 50 years old (OR = 2.17; 95% CI = 1.11-4.22), having over 10 million household income (OR = 1.94; 99% CI = 1.05-3.61), an exercise habit (OR = 1.75; 95% CI = 1.07-2.86), an awareness of Healthy Japan 21 (OR = 23.60; 95% CI = 15.26-36.52), the Japanese Nutrition Balance Guide (OR = 5.52; 95% GCI = 3.01-10.13), and the Japanese national policy for preventing metabolic syndrome (OR = 3.41; 95% CI = 2.12-5.48) were significantly more likely to be aware of the guideline. CONCLUSIONS: Major findings of this study were: 1) older people are more aware of Exercise Guideline 2006 than their younger counterparts, although level of awareness was generally low; 2) for promotion of Exercise Guideline 2006, targeting those with a low educational background might not be a critical issue; and 3) awareness levels for Exercise Guideline 2006 and HealthyJapan 21 are similar. Development of effective and specific ways for promoting Exercise Guideline 2006 are a high priority.