Scheduled for Sport Management, Psychology, and Leisure & Recreation Posters, Thursday, April 1, 2004, 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM, Convention Center: Exhibit Hall Poster Session


Relations of Field Dependence-Independence to Adolescents' Physical Activity Level

Wenhao Liu, The Sage Colleges, Troy, NY and J. Rose Chepyator-Thomson, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

It has repeatedly been reported that field-independent (FI) individuals have higher sports competence than field-dependent (FD) individuals (Mcleod, 1987; Raviv & Nabel, 1990). Little was known, however, regarding relations of field dependence-independence (FDI) to people’s level of physical activity (PA). The purpose of the study was to examine whether FDI as measured by Rod-and-Frame Test (RFT) was related to adolescents’ PA level. One hundred and thirty-eight students (66 boys and 72 girls) from a middle school completed Self-Administered Physical Activity Checklist, a valid instrument to measure PA level (Sallis et al., 1996). Potable RFT (Oltman, 1968), most frequently used when involving FDI and sport potential (Brady, 1995), was employed to examine the participants’ FDI status. The high reliability (r = .73, p < .000) of the potable RFT in this study was indicated by split-half method, and the acceptable validity (r = - .41, p < .000) of the potable RFT was obtained with Spearman correlation against a researcher-generated rating sheet completed by the physical education teachers to rate participants’ sports skill. Pearson correlation revealed the significant correlations between RFT scores and each of the following four PA variables: (a) minutes of PA (r = -.35, p = .003), (b) minutes of moderate and vigorous (MV) PA (r = -.34, p = .004), (c) MET score (r = -.35, p = .003), and (d) MET score for MVPA (r = -.34, p = .004). No difference was found, however, in FDI statues (p > .05) and each of the four PA variables (p > .05) between boys and girls. The findings indicate that FI adolescents as measured by RFT are more physically active than their FD counterpart. FI individuals are considered in the literature to be more sensitive to kinesthetic and proprioceptive information and therefore tend to have advantage in sports potential, which is likely to be conducive to a higher PA level. As the development of habitual PA participation becomes one of the major goals in school physical education, it is necessary to identify strategies to encourage FD adolescents, who tend to be less skillful in sports and less physically active, to enhance their PA level.
Keyword(s): measurement/evaluation, middle school issues, physical activity

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