ABSTRACT
Physical activity (PA) declines with an increase in biological maturity (Sherar et al., 2007). Girls of the same age differ considerably in their degree of physical maturity. Barriers to PA, defined as factors perceived to limit or hinder PA participation, differ across grade level (Gyurcsik et al., 2006), but little is known about whether barriers differ by physical maturity. Understanding the relationship between physical maturity status (i.e. early, average or late) and barriers to PA would be important to understand when designing appropriately tailored interventions aimed at alleviating salient barriers. The objective of this research is to explore the PA behaviours and barriers to PA between early, average and late maturing adolescent girls. It was hypothesized that early maturing girls would participate in less PA and experience different barriers to PA than late maturing girls.
