Background/Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare physical activity (PA) levels of junior high school physical education (PE) students participating in coed and single-gender PE classes that followed the tactical games model.
Method: A total of 446 students, aged 11-16 years old, enrolled in the 7th-9th grades from one junior high school in the southwest participated. Each student participated in 4 team sport units (8 lessons per unit) while wearing an accelerometer. All lessons followed the tactical games instructional model.
Analysis/Results: Four three-way between-subjects analyses of variance were conducted to evaluate the effect of gender, class setting (coed or single-gender) and grade on PE students' PA levels for each sport unit. There was not a significant difference in PA for males by setting or sport unit. During basketball females spent a significantly greater percentage of time in MVPA in the same-sex (15.91%) setting versus the coed setting (10.65%). Seventh graders spent more percentage of time (20.7 %) in MVPA than the 9th graders (17.6%). During the volleyball, flag football and soccer unit there was a non-significant difference between percentages of time spent in MVPA for female students in either setting. During the soccer unit 9th graders spent more percentage of time in MVPA in the same-sex setting (24.6%) than the coed setting (18.4%).
Conclusions: Results suggest setting does not affect MVPA time of males but does affect females depending on sport. Results suggest that males spend more time in MVPA than females regardless of setting and sport unit.