Background/Purpose The purpose of our research was to examine whether there was a relationship between overweight children and their mindset (Dweck, 2006) toward physical activity or their ability to be active and ability to obtain a healthy body weight. We hypothesized there would be a positive relationship between an entity healthy body weight mindset and BMI and a positive relationship between an incremental physical activity mindset and a variety of fitness scores.
Method The sample included 1233 elementary school children in Grades 4, 5, and 6, from one urban school district. Students were African-American (n = 490, 39.7%), Caucasian (n = 475, 38.5%), or Hispanic, Asian, American Indian, Inter-racial, or other (n = 268, 21.8%). Data were collected via the Conceptions of the Nature of Athletic Ability Questionnaire (Biddle, Wang, Chatzisarantis, & Spray, 2003) and a battery of fitness tests.
Analysis/Results Results indicated that our hypothesis was not supported when examining a health body weight mindset. Entity beliefs were not related to BMI scores, r(482) = .07, p = .13; incremental beliefs were not correlated to BMI scores, r(478) = .04, p = .40. Results for physical activity mindset indicated that that our hypothesis was partially supported. Entity beliefs were negatively correlated with a variety of fitness scores; Pacer test, r(486) -.19, p < .001 and push ups, r(487) -.11, p = .02. In contrast, incremental beliefs were not related to the fitness scores.
Conclusions Discussion will focus on the implications of these findings for teachers and African American Children.
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