Promoting Children's Exercise Motivation and Physical Activity Through Interactive Games

Background/Purpose: Currently interactive games have been introduced into public schools as a tool to promote students' exercise motivation and physical activity levels. Interactive games are new generation of gaming activities that integrate body movement and exercise with computer technology (e.g., Dance Dance Revolution [DDR]). Guided by the Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986), this 1-year intervention study was designed to determine whether the implementation of DDR can promote children's exercise motivation and physical activity levels. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of DDR on urban school children's self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, perceived social support, and daily physical activity levels.

Methods: The participants were 101 school children (52 boys; 50 fourth graders, 51 fifth graders; 71.28% Latino Americans) recruited from an urban predominantly Latino Elementary School in the Mountain west region and the majority of them came from economically disadvantaged families. All participants responded to questionnaires assessing their self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, and perceived social support, and reported their 7-day recalled physical activity levels at the beginning of the school year. The fourth graders were assigned to the DDR treatment group (three 30 min. DDR sessions per week), while the fifth graders were placed in the control group. The participants completed all the questionnaires again at the end of the school year. The one way (grade) MANOVA with repeated measures were used to analyze the data.

Analysis/Results: The MANOVA yielded a significant interaction effect between grade and time, Wilks' Lambda = .78; F (4, 90) = 8.43, p < .05, η2 = .24. Follow-up tests indicated that fourth graders' self-reported self-efficacy (p < .05), social support (p < .01), and daily physical activity levels (p < .05) increased significantly over one school year, whereas fifth graders reported significantly higher scores in outcome expectancy and social support over time (p < .05 for both).

Conclusions: The results suggested that the implementation of DDR could have a significantly positive effect on children's self-efficacy, social support, and daily physical activity levels. As the control group, the fifth graders also reported higher outcome expectancy and social support. It is plausible that they became more aware of the benefits of physical activity and had more social interactions as they grew up. The findings of the study can inform health professionals how to effectively promote urban children's exercise motivation and physical activity levels, with the goal of tackling and reversing the epidemic of obesity.