Effects of PE4Life Program on Students' Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activity in Physical Education Classes

Background/Purpose: Limited moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) time in PE classes remains a national concern (McKenzie, 2003), and even nationally-known intervention programs seldom meet the national objective regarding MVPA for 50% of class time (McKenzie et al., 2004). Meanwhile, a relative new intervention, PE4life, has been characterized by its fitness/physical activity focus and wide use of physical activity promotion technology, which may increase MVPA time considerably. The purpose of this study is to examine MVPA percentage in PE classes at a PE4life Academy program as compared to that of a traditional PE program.

Method: Forty-three lessons at a PE4life Academy middle school (Intervention) and 71 lessons at a middle school with traditional PE program (Comparison) were observed with System for Observing Fitness Instruction Time (McKenzie, Sallis, & Nader, 1991) during a two-year period (2007-08 to 2008-09) with an overall inter-observer agreement of 96.7% for student activity level. The Intervention school actively applied physical activity promotion strategies such as lock room time limitation, instant activity, small-sided game play, use of pedometers and/or heart rate monitors for every lesson, and large portion of fitness activity with cardio/weight machines and equipment. By contrast, the Comparison school had multiple units of different team sports where one-ball game play dominated. The two schools were geographically close with similar demographics in socioeconomic status (median income approximately $30K), student race composition (white > 93%), PE class size (35-39 vs. 31-36), and scheduled PE class time (42 min vs. 41 min). One-way MANOVA was used to examine differences in percentage of class time spent in each of six activity categories (lying, sitting, standing, walking, very active, and MVPA – combination of walking and very active) and the percentage of actual lesson time between the two schools.

Analysis/Results: Highly significant differences (p < .001) were found on the following dependent measures in favor of the Intervention school in terms of percentage of the class time spent: (a) sitting, Intervention 1.14±2.42 vs. Comparison 7.24± 8.24; (b) standing, 9.33±8.50 vs. 16.16±8.93; (c) walking, 18.08±9.09 vs. 32.66±10.40; (d) very active, 50.39±13.79 vs. 12.86±9.52; (e) MVPA, 68.47±11.03 vs. 45.52±11.08, and (f) actual lesson time, 79.09±3.54 vs. 68.97±9.13.

Conclusions: By intentionally applying physical activity promotion strategies, the PE4life program spends significantly larger percentage of class time in MVPA and actual lesson (implying less time in lock rooms) than the traditional PE program does, surpassing the national objective in MVPA by 18 percentage points.