Background/Purpose: Identifying the energy expenditure of physical activities could help children and teachers make healthy choices. New technologies have created active gaming experiences that require physical movement to participate in video game play. The health benefit of such activities remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to compare energy expenditure during sport and active gaming experiences, in relation to gender and ethnicity.
Method: To determine the feasibility of these methods for a larger study, three cohorts of children (N= 52) ages 7-14 participated in teacher led sports (e.g. basketball, dance) and active gaming (e.g. Wii, xBox, Xavix) in a counterbalanced sequence, wearing Polar E600 heart rate monitors and ActiGraph GT3X accelerometers. Both activity types included individual competitive and partner cooperative tasks with performance feedback. On average, the period of engagement lasted 20 minutes per activity.
Analysis/Results: ANOVA revealed a significant difference between sport (M=2.92 Kcal/min) and active gaming (M=2.50 Kcal/min; p<.001) with no significant difference between gender (Mmales=2.89 Kcal/min, Mfemales=3.02 Kcal/min, p=.80) or ethnicity (Hispanic/NonHispanic M=2.65 Kcal/min, M=3.27, p=.21, respectively).
Conclusions: Concerns about overestimating the benefits of active gaming may be warranted, as teacher led sport activities resulted in higher energy expenditure. When the amount of time spent in engagement is increased, there could be greater benefits associated with sport over active gaming participation. However, active gaming is better than inactivity. Teachers should purposefully select gaming tasks if used during physical education.
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