Promotion of physical activities among school children: A seven-country study

This study was motivated by recent reports on health issues related to sedentary lifestyle among children. The study aimed to explore the effect of video physical exercise on the attitudes, beliefs, and self-efficacy toward physical activity by children at the primary school level. Participants comprised 2,863 (1404 males, 1459 females) primary students between grades 1 and 5 who had never used Brain Break before. The students were recruited from seven countries, namely, Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, South Africa, and Turkey. Students were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Students in the experimental group engaged in Brain Break online streaming video exercise for 5 to 10 minutes each day, 5 days a week consecutively for 3 months during the 2014-2015 school year. Both groups were pre- and post-tested using a pre-validated self-report questionnaire. Comparison using analysis of covariance found the experimental group to be more positive than the control groups in their post-test scores after controlling for gender and pre-test scores on attitudes toward physical fitness, self-efficacy, personal best goal orientation in physical activity, interest in physical activity, importance of physical activity, benefits of physical activity, contributions of video exercise to learning in school subjects, contributions of video exercise to learning about health and environmental support. There was no significant gender difference. Educational implications are discussed in the paper.