Background: School recess provides a daily opportunity for physical activity engagement. The purpose of this study was to examine physical activity levels during recess by gender, ethnicity, and grade, and establish the contribution of recess to daily school physical activity levels. Methods: Two hundred and ten children (45% boys) from grades 3…

In contemporary obesity discourse, physical activity is routinely portrayed as essential regarding weight regulation. This axiom tends to neglect that health-enhancing exercise may involve categorically different sets of corporeal experiences for obese individuals than for people of other weight categories. Rather, obese people are seen as…

School playtime (recess) provides children an opportunity to engage in a range of active and sedentary play behaviors on a daily basis. However, little data have investigated changes in playtime behaviors over time. The aim of this study was to investigate how children's physical activity levels, the size of their social group, play behaviors and…

Purpose: This paper assesses the degree to which "active living" varies along the rural-urban continuum, within the county-sized regional municipality of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Methods: Time-diary data from the Halifax Space-Time Activity Research project were used to compute daily participation rates (PRs) and time durations, at various…

This study investigated student physical activity (PA) and body mass index (BMI) in relation to the "Healthy Campus 2010" objectives set by the American College Health Association in 2002. Students (N = 1125) at a U.S. southern state university participated in the study. The percentages of students who were physically active and whose…

This article explores an innovative strategy for battling the obesity epidemic. The strategy involves demonstrating to policy makers and education leaders the value of promoting physical activity in school as a way of enhancing academic-related outcomes to narrow the current achievement gap. A literature review was conducted to ascertain the…

Background: This study evaluates the relationship of goal setting to low-fat vegetable (LV) and fruit/100% juice (FJ) consumption and physical activity (PA) change. Methods: A total of 473 10- to 14-year-old Boy Scouts from Houston took part in a 9-week intervention. A two-group (LV and FJ or PA) intervention design was used with each group…

This paper investigates the relationship between physical activity and depressed mood, under conditions of family conflict. We analyze data from a representative sample of 7232 Icelandic adolescents. Analysis of variance was carried out to test for main and interaction effects. The study shows that while family conflict increases the likelihood of…

As mentioned in the introduction, Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) programs and physical education teachers will need to identify and resolve the tensions of shifting from a traditional role of a self-contained physical education program to that of an expanding role of physical education that supports lifelong physical activity in…

Despite an increase in the provision of effective school-based interventions in recent times, there is an absence of literature for teachers focusing on the translation of promising interventions into real-world practice. The aim of this research was to provide a social-ecological guide for teachers of the external validity of implementing the…

Background: Physical education teacher education (PETE) offers a context for students to learn about the promotion of active lifestyles in secondary schools through their interactions and experiences during the teacher education process. However, previous studies have found low levels of health-related fitness knowledge amongst PETE students,…

Research has found that many characteristics are related to performance on standardized tests. Many of these are not necessarily "academic" attributes. One area of this research is on the connection between physical health or lifestyles and test performance. The research that exists in this area is often disconnected with each other and…

Perceived control plays an important role for health across adulthood and old age. However, little is known about the factors that account for such associations and whether changes in control (or control trajectory) uniquely predict major health outcomes over and above mean levels of control. Using data from the nationwide Americans' Changing…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to objectively assess levels of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) of Chinese city children and youth aged 9 to 17 years old using accelerometers and to examine their differences by gender, age, grade, and weight status. Method: The PA and SB of 2,163 students in 4th grade through 11th grade…

Direct (systematic) observation has been a mainstay of my research for over three decades. I believe it is an important tool for assessing physical activity, because it can simultaneously provide contextually rich data on the setting in which the activity occurs. It is particularly useful for those interested in using ecological and…