Background:

Sedentary behaviors are one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular diseases.

Aim:

To identify factors associated with high sedentary behaviors in the Chilean population.

Material and Methods:

We included 5,040 participants from the Chilean National Health Survey 2009-2010. Physical activity level and sedentary behavior (sitting time) were measured using the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ v2). Highly sedentary behaviors were determined as > 4 hours per day of sitting time. Logistic regression was used to identify correlates of highly sedentary behavior.

Results:

Forty seven percent of the study population reported spending more than 4 hours per day sitting. The prevalence was higher in women.

The main factors associated with high sedentary behavior were:

high income levels (Odds ratio (OR):1.91 [95% Confidence intervals (CI:1.61-2.27]); being woman (OR:1.39 [95% CI:1.24-1.56]): having central obesity (OR:1.15 [95% CI:1.02-1.30]), being physically inactive (OR:2.35 [95% CI:2.06-2.68]), and living in an urban area (OR:1.92 [95% CI:1.63-2.26]).

Other factors associates with high sedentary behavior were:

being smoker, having a television set, computer and private car at their homes. Participants reporting a poor self-reported health and wellbeing and those with diabetes or metabolic syndrome were more likely to be highly sedentary.

Conclusions:

The main factors associated with high levels of sedentary behavior are socio-demographic issues, lifestyles and health status.