Out-of-School Sports Participation Is Positively Associated with Physical Literacy, but What about Physical Education? A Cross-Sectional Gender-Stratified Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic among High-School Adolescents

Abstract

Physical literacy (PL) is one of the main concepts related to lifelong physical activity (PA) and physical fitness (PF), but there is a lack of information on factors that might be associated with PL in adolescents from southeastern Europe. This study aimed to evaluate the associations between PF, participation and achievement in physical education (PE), out-of-school participation in sports, and PL in high school adolescents from Croatia. Participants were 298 high school students aged 14–18 years (191 females). Variables included school age, PE grade, sports participation, anthropometric indices, four PF tests, and PL (evidenced by CAPL-2-knowledge and understanding questionnaire (CAPL-2-KU) and PLAYself questionnaire). Gender-stratified analyses of differences were conducted using the t-test for independent samples or the Mann-Whitney test. Associations between variables were calculated with Pearson’s product moment correlation or Spearman’s rank order correlation. PF was positively correlated CAPL-2-KU in both genders. PE grade was significantly associated with PLAYself score (Pearson’s correlation = 0.36 and 0.38, p < 0.001 for boys and girls, respectively) but not with the CAPL-2-KU score. School age was not correlated with PL among boys, but there was a significant but negligible correlation between CAPL-2-KU and school age in girls (<2% of the common variance). Adolescents involved in sports had better PL and PF compared with adolescents not involved in sports. In conclusion, participation in out-of-school sports offers a good base for developing PL. Although this study took part over the COVID-19 pandemic period when the regular PE curriculum was significantly altered, the poor associations between school age and PL could lead to the assumption that the current PE curriculum does not allow for improvement of PL in later high school age, which warrants further investigation.

Specificity of the Associations between Indices of Cardiovascular Health with Health Literacy and Physical Literacy; A Cross-Sectional Study in Older Adolescents

“…A total score of 100 indicated the maximum self-perceived PL. The study employed the Croatian version of the PLAYself questionnaire, which produced reliable results in previous works regarding Croatian adolescents [ 37 , 38 ].…”

Are Health Literacy and Physical Literacy Independent Concepts? A Gender-Stratified Analysis in Medical School Students from Croatia

“…A total score of 100 points indicated the highest self-perceived PL. In this study, we used the Croatian version of the PLAYself questionnaire, which was previously shown to be reliable and valid among Croatian adolescents [ 32 , 33 ]. PLAYself was conducted using the online platform SurveyMonkey (SurveyMonkey Inc., San Mateo, CA, USA).…”

Evaluation of Physical Literacy in 9- to 11-Year-Old Children: Reliability and Validity of Two Measurement Tools in Three Southeastern European Countries

“…Testing was carried out in small groups, up to 10 children, and the children could not see the other participants' answers. PLAYself and CAPL-2 questionnaires were previously proven to be feasible, valid, and reliable for 14-to 18-year-old Croatian adolescents [26,28]. However, knowing the similarity of the Croatian, Bosnian and Herzegovinian, and Montenegrin languages (other than some grammar and punctuation differences, these three languages are practically equal), only some minor corrections and adaptations were applied for conducting the tests in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.…”

“…However, these studies rarely simultaneously evaluated the reliability of different questionnaires. In one of these few studies investigating 14-to 18-year-old Croatian adolescents, Šunda found that both PLAYself and CAPL-2 were reliable, but PLAYself showed higher reliability and suggested that these differences in reliability could be due to specific features of the physical education curriculum in Croatia [26]. The physical education curricula in the three studied countries are mostly oriented toward the development of motor skills and conditioning capacities, while the (theoretical) knowledge and understanding of the importance of PA are poorly considered [26].…”

“…Meanwhile, CAPL-2, and PLAYself questionnaires were repeatedly found to be reliable and valid measurement tools [19,[21][22][23][24][25]. However, the reliability and validity of the PL-measurement tools in southeastern Europe is rarely evidenced, and only one study examined this issue in adolescents [26], while: (i) there is an evident lack of research examining this issue in younger children, and (ii) to the best of our knowledge, no study has been conducted on elementary school children in southeastern Europe (the territory where similar Slavic languages are spoken) [27]. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of translated versions of the CAPL-2 and PLAYself questionnaires in 9-to 11-year-old children from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.…”