Gender and Intention to Be Physically Active
There was no statistically significant difference between gender and intention to be PA thus suggesting gender is not a good predictor of third grade children‟s intentions to participate in PA even though boys tend to have higher extracurricular PA participation rates. Although the reason for this discrepancy is unknown, it may be that girls don‟t enjoy or are not comfortable participating in organized sports or structured PA programs. Girls in this study might enjoy PA and the pleasure derived from movement but may not have good feelings about group-based activities.
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BMI
There was not a significant relationship between self-efficacy, social influences, or beliefs and BMI. Individuals in the overweight group actually revealed slightly higher scores than individuals in the normal weight and underweight groups for all three correlates. Thus these findings add to the complex and inconsistent relationship between PA and body weight-related variables in children.
Intervention Recommendations
Significance was found in two of the three psychosocial variables being investigated in this study. Beliefs and self-efficacy were both found to be significantly associated with children‟s PA participation and intention to be physically active. Thus, supporting the suggestion that interventions must target changes in variables from multiple categories including psychological, behavioral, and environmental, in order to achieve a substantial behavior change.
Analysis indicates that children involved in FC have more positive Beliefs about the outcomes of being physically active as well as higher Self-Efficacy. Perhaps intervention efforts at increasing children‟s PA participation should be aimed at increasing FC participation rates among third graders. This could occur through efforts to make FC seem more valuable to students and parents. One way to do this may be to stress that FC is safe and that participants are not likely to get hurt (through the Is it worth it? path of the YPAPM). Another way to improve FC Participation is through the Am I Able? path of the YPAPM. This can be done by reducing perceived barriers to PA like TV and video games. Previous studies have demonstrated that a reduced access to sedentary
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alternatives is linked to increased levels of PA (Epstein & Roemmich, 2001). Parental encouragement was significantly associated with outside of school PA participation thus parents encourage their children to participate in FC may be beneficial. One way to do this is to have a meeting or a focus group to discuss the benefits and barriers of participating in FC. Another suggestion is to organize car-pooling as transportation was mentioned as a barrier to participation by the creators of FC.