Physical Activity Training and MiddleAged Females’ Quality of Life

Background: Despite the great benefits of physical activity, immobility is still a major health problem among females. Regular physical activity is associated with higher levels of health status and better quality of life. Objectives: The current study aimed to evaluate the effects of physical activity training on middle-aged females’ quality of life. Methods: This randomized controlled field trial was conducted on 88 middle-aged females who referred to Nehbandan district healthcare center, Nehbandan, Iran. The females were randomly and evenly allocated into a control and an experimental group. Then, an eight-session physical activity training program was implemented for the females in the experimental group. Study data were collected both before and one month after the intervention on a self-report basis and by the short-form 36-item quality of life questionnaire (SF-36) and two seven-choice questions to assess the length of physical activity in the past two weeks. Finally, the data were transferred to the SPSS ver. 16 and analyzed through running the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, the paired- and the independentsamples T, the Mann-Whitney U, the Wilcoxon, and the Chi-square tests. The level of significance was 0.05. Results: Before the intervention, the means of quality of life in the experimental and the control groups were 67.77 17.39 and 67.57 14.18 which increased respectively to 81.66 11.88 and 69.00 14.81 after the intervention. The difference between the groups regarding the pretest values of quality of life was not statistically significant (P = 0.72); while after the intervention, this difference was statistically significant (P = 0.001). On the other hand, the pretest mean values of physical activity duration in the groups were 45.00 30.53 and 43.24 42.31 which increased respectively to 158.45 53.35 and 58.75 55.39 minutes after the intervention. Again, intergroup difference regarding the pretest values of physical activity duration was insignificant (P = 0.82); while after the intervention, this difference was statistically significant (P = 0.001). Conclusions: Active engagement in physical activities has positive effects on middle-aged females’ quality of life. Therefore, developing and implementing training intervention is recommended to improve middle-aged females’ quality of life.