The effectiveness of interventions to increase physical activity among young girls: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Context. Pre-adolescent girls are an important target population for physical activity behaviour change as it may enhance tracking into the crucial period of adolescence. The quantification of intervention effectiveness for this age group of girls has not been previously reported.Evidence acquisition. Studies published in English up to and including August 2013 were located from computerised (MedLine, PsychInfo, Science Direct, Web of Science, EPPI centre databases, and Cochrane Library database) and manual searches. Intervention studies aimed at promoting physical activity, that included pre-adolescent girls aged 5-11 years, and a non-physical activity control/comparison group, were included.Evidence synthesis. A random-effects meta-analysis was conducted. The average treatment effect for pre-adolescent girls involved in physical activity interventions was significant but small (g = 0.314, p < .001). Moderator analyses showed larger effects for interventions that catered for girls-only and used educational and multicomponent strategies.Conclusions. Interventions to increase physical activity in pre-adolescent girls show small but significant effects, suggesting that behaviour change may be challenging, but results suggest some strategies that could be successful.

Bristol Girls Dance Project: a cluster randomised controlled trial of an after-school dance programme to increase physical activity among 11- to 12-year-old girls

“…36 Interventions targeted at increasing girls' PA in particular have had similarly small effects (p< 0.001). 13 Biddle et al 13 have suggested that, although behaviour change is possible for female pre-adolescent populations, it is difficult. This conclusion was recently supported by Lubans et al, 15 who also reported that an intervention did not increase PA levels of their adolescent sample.…”

“…In terms of the decline in attendance, the qualitative research is particularly insightful. Corroborating the views of the BGDP participants, who suggested reducing the overall length of the intervention period, research 13,34 has found that studies were more effective when the intervention period was short (< 12 weeks). A long intervention period was considered potentially boring and unsuitable to young people; again, this was a view supported by the focus groups and by interviews.…”

“…13 On average, girls in intervention groups accrued 12.17% more PA than girls in control groups. The authors suggested that the results led to the belief that behaviour change in this population is challenging but possible.…”

Recommendations for Recruiting and Retaining Adolescent Girls in Chronic Exercise (Training) Research Studies

“…Homogenous ability-based groups of the same gender might alleviate body dissatisfaction concerns. The efficacy of this recommendation can also be traced to the broader literature in which it has been found that less-active girls prefer "girls-only" exercise groups [24,37].…”

Increasing girls’ physical activity during a short-term organized youth sport basketball program: A randomized controlled trial

“…Studies have found that girls accumulate less PA than boys throughout childhood, 7 and their participation in PA drops more steeply than boys during the transition into adolescence. 8 As such, girls have been identified as a high priority group for PA promotion 9 and constitute the population of focus for this study.…”