Children’s Physical Activity and Psychosocial Beliefs in Mobile Application-Based Physical Education Classes

Abstract

Childhood obesity has become a national concern in the U.S. over the past decades. Offering quality physical education programs is one of the effective approaches of a variety of school-based physical interventions. To gain children’s attention and their lack of interest in physical movement, physical education teachers have recently employed novel technologies, such as the iPad and exercise-related mobile applications. While many studies examined the effect of these devices on promoting individuals’ physical activity in primary and fitness settings, few research was done on physical education settings. The purpose of this study was to examine the app-based physical education classes on children’s physical activity and their psychosocial beliefs. Fourth and fifth grade children from two elementary schools (n = 157) participated in this study. Children from one school received a short-term app-based intervention while those from the other school participated in traditional physical education classes with limited technology use, serving as a comparison group. Children’s sedentary, light and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity during physical education classes was measured with accelerometers. A battery of questionnaires was used to assess children’s self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, social support, and enjoyment in physical education. Children in the app-based group spent approximately 21.3% of their class time on moderate-to-vigorous activity while children in the comparison group spent approximately 30.5% of their time. Both fell far below the recommended level of spending at least 50% of the class time on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. The app-based group demonstrated significantly less increased percentage of time spent in both light physical activity (-6.2% vs. 4.2%), F (1, 154) =97.7, p < 0.001, η2 =0.39, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity ( -8.6% vs. -1.6%), F (1, 154) =31.4, p<.001, ηp2 =0.17. The app-based group (14.8%) also had a significantly greater increased percentage of time in sedentary behavior than the comparison group (-2.6%), F (1, 154) = 110.6, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.42. For children’s beliefs, there was no significant differences in increases of all four beliefs between the app-based group and the comparison group. Correlation analyses of children’s post-tests indicated that none of the children’s beliefs was significantly associated with children’s physical activity, while enjoyment significantly related to the percentage of time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in the comparison group. The results of the regression analyses indicated the four predictors explained 6.1 % of the variance in children’s post-test moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in the app-based group, R2 = 0.06, F (4,66) = 1.07, p = 0.38. In the comparison group, the four predictors explained 9.4 % of the variance in the percentage of time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, but the model was also not significant, R2 = 0.09, F (4, 73) =1.89, p = 0.12. It appears that the app-based physical education classes were not effective in improving elementary children’s physical activity and psychosocial beliefs, possibly due to a learning curve. A longer intervention period may be needed to witness true effect of app-based physical education classes on promoting children’s physical activity and beliefs. It is also recommended that children themselves have more opportunities to engage in group activities using iPads and apps to benefit more from the features such as video playback to receive feedback on their own movements.