Statement of the Problem

Many community youth organizations face the challenge of hiring well-trained staff largely due to funding issues. Effective yet affordable programs are sought after if wider dissemination of health/fitness programs should take place at such organizations. This study examined the effectiveness of a health/fitness program on children’s fitness when provided by paraprofessional existing staff at Boys and Girls clubs (Club) who received a brief training and used a program manual that described step-by-step behavioral tasks for each lesson.

  Methods

Design: A pre- and post-assessment design where participants in an intervention group and a comparison group received identical assessments. Children at the clubs (intervention group) engaged in a 45-60 minute program activity three times per week for 12 weeks while children from a school district near the club locations (comparison group) received no intervention during the same period. Physical activities that were considered developmentally appropriate by a team of fitness professionals were included in the intervention.

 

Participants: Age of the participants ranged from 12 to 17. Among 95 club members and 113 school children that participated in the pre-assessments, 59 and 73 completed the post-assessments, respectively.

 

Measurement: Fitness assessments included pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, step test, sit-and-reach test, shuttle run, and one-foot-standing balance test. Due to the weather condition on the date of post-assessment, children in the comparison group were not assessed for pull-ups and shuttle run.

 

Analysis: ANOVAs were used to examine whether changes observed in each variable were different from the intervention group to the comparison group after controlling for the effect of pre-assessment scores. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test and paired t-test were used to examine whether post-assessment scores differed from pre-assessment scores in the intervention group for pull-ups and shuttle run because no post-assessment data were available from the comparison group.

  Results

Improvements in push-ups and sit-and-reach were shown to be different from the intervention group to the comparison group (both at .001 level) while no significant differences were found in step test, one-foot-standing test, and sit-ups. The improvements were greater for the intervention group. Among children in the intervention group, scores in pull-ups and shuttle-run at post-assessment were different from those at pre-assessment (p<.05 and p<.001, respectively). The children showed improvements.

  Conclusion

This study suggests that a detailed program manual with minimum training could generate improvement in several fitness aspects among children. This approach may provide a promising model for other community-based youth organizations.