Relationships between attitude towards physical activity and physical activity level at school

It would be interesting to determine if students’ attitude towards physical activity (PA) is linked to the students’ level of PA during school time as well as to verify if the school time contributes significantly to the daily PA of the youth. A descriptive survey was carried out on 480 children from grade 6 (120 boys & 120 girls and grade 9 (120 boys & 120 girls randomly selected from 8 schools in Pune city (India). Their attitude towards PA and physical fitness were measured using SAPAPF (Pethkar, 2012). Pedometer determined number of steps accumulated through the school hours were measured for a week and averaged to find out the amount of PA during school-hours. Data analysis revealed that students in all four groups had positive attitude towards PA (175.20±19.32, 173.93±15.21, 173.98±17.94, 181.03±12.67) while the number of steps averaged from 3566.6 (±604.28), 4065.93 (±615.77), 2938.75 (±583.79) and 3145.95 (±588.65) for girls and boys in grade 6 and 9, respectively. A significant positive correlation between the attitude and the PA level has been found (Spearman rho correlation coefficients of .497, .623, .578, .705; p ≤0.05). However, the number of steps accumulated through the school hours was particularly far from the objectives recommended by public health bodies. Confirming findings from other contexts, comparison between school PA of girls and boys revealed that boys were more active than girls, younger students being more active than their older counterparts. The findings show that students who have a positive attitude towards PA find opportunities to be more active at school than those with a poor attitude. Moreover, school could play a more important role in providing to the students more opportunities to be physically active and to improve the attitude of some students towards PA. PE should become the corner stone of such mission.