Police officers (PO) need to engage in training and duty activities in which one’s performance might be affected by their physical activity level (PAL).
PURPOSE: To evaluate predictors of PAL among Brazilian military law enforcement personnel.
METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional study of 418 volunteers, recruited by convenience in a state of Brazil. PAL was calculated using the IPAQ-questionnaire as the sum of total min/week of walking (3.3 METs), moderate (4.0 METs), and vigorous activity (8.0 METs). The effect of independent variables on the PAL, as a continuous outcome, was first assessed using simple linear regression. Variables that had a p-value ≤0.2, namely age, BMI, gender, role, rank, partner status, educational level and the 4 domains of quality of life (QoL) assessed by WHO QoL questionnaire, were included in the final multivariate regression model.
RESULTS: The majority of the volunteers were men (88%) with an average age 38.6 ± 6.6 years. Average BMI was 26.5 ± 3.4 kg/m² with 16% of the participants being obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m²) while 185 (44%) did not meet the physical activity guidelines. After adjusting for covariates BMI, educational level, and QoL Environmental domain were significantly associated with PAL (Table 1). Each unit decrease in BMI was associated with a 56 METs/min/week increase in PAL and each unit increase in QoL Environmental Domain was associated with 13 METs/min/week increase in PAL. Also, having a college degree or above, vs. having only secondary education, was associated with an increase of 381 METs/min/week in PAL, which corresponds to more than half of the PAL guidelines. CONCLUSION: In this sample of military PO, BMI, educational level and the Environmental Domain of QoL showed to be significant predictors of IPAQ-based PAL.
Table 1: Multivariate linear regression with PAL as continuous variable (METs/min/week)

	β	SE	p
Age	6.7	9.9	0.50
BMI (kg/m2)	-56.2	17.6	0.001
Gender	251.9	191.4	0.19
Role	-53.0	126.8	0.68
Rank	83.6	149.7	0.58
Educational level	381.1	134.7	0.005
QoL Physical domain	7.2	5.1	0.15
QoL Psychological domain	-5.7	5.8	0.33
QoL Environmental domain	12.8	5.6	0.02

Role: field or administrative; rank: officer or enlisted; educational level: ≤secondary or ≥higher; QoL: quality of life