Using physical education to promote out-of school physical activity in lower secondary school students – a randomized controlled trial protocol

Abstract

BackgroundGiven the documented decline in levels of physical activity in early adolescence, promoting physical activity in young people is a priority for health promotion. School physical education (PE) is an important existing network in which participation in physical activity beyond school can be promoted to the captive young people. The objective of current article is to present the protocol for a PE teacher-delivered theory-based trial to promote secondary school students’ participation in physical activity out-of-school contexts. The intervention will be guided by the trans-contextual model explaining the processes by which PE teachers’ support for autonomous motivation in the classroom promotes students’ motivation to engage in out-of-school physical activity. We hypothesize that school students receiving the teacher-delivered intervention to promote autonomous motivation toward physical activity will exhibit greater participation in physical activities outside of school, relative to students receiving a control intervention.MethodsThe trial will adopt a waitlist-control design with cluster-randomization by school. PE teachers assigned to the intervention condition will receive a two-week, 12-h training program comprising basic information on how to promote out-of-school physical activity and theory-based training on strategies to promote students’ autonomous motivation toward physical activity. Teachers assigned to the waitlist control condition will receive an alternative training on how to monitor physical functional capacity in children with special needs. PE teachers (n = 29) from eleven schools will apply the intervention program to students (n = 502) in PE classes for one month. Physical activity participation, the primary outcome variable, and psychological mediators from the trans-contextual model will be measured at pre-trial, post-trial, and at one-, three- and six-months post-trial. We will also assess teachers’ autonomy-supportive techniques and behaviours by observation.DiscussionThe study will make a unique contribution to the literature by testing a theory-based intervention delivered by PE teachers to promote school students’ participation in out-of-school physical activity. Information will be useful for educators, community stakeholders and policy makers interested in developing programs to promote students’ out-of-school physical activity.Trial registrationISRCTN39374060. Registered 19.7.2018.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6478-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Using Physical Education to Promote Leisure-Time Physical Activity in Lower Secondary School Students: The PETALS Trial

“…Self-report measures of physical activity, the primary outcome, and measures of the psychological constructs from the TCM taken at baseline and follow-up according to the protocol were translated from English to Finnish using a back-translation process by two bilingual researchers [54]. Full details about each measure can be found in the protocol article [48]. A summary of study measures, data collection occasions, and methods is provided in Table S1, Appendix B (supplementary materials).…”

“…The trial protocol was pre-registered (registration no. ISRCTN39374060) and the study protocol was published previously [48].…”

“…A depiction of the study timeline including key milestones and data collection occasions is presented in Figure S1, Appendix A (supplementary materials). Based on an a priori statistical power analysis [48], we aimed to recruit 476 student participants at baseline (n = 238 participants in each group) to detect effect sizes observed in previous TCM research. All available lower secondary level school PE teachers in the city participated in the teacher-training phase of the study, irrespective of their participation in the study, as the city Education Department had accepted the teacher training to be part of PE teachers' regular in-service training.…”

Predictors of School Students’ Leisure-Time Physical Activity: An Extended Trans-Contextual Model Using Bayesian Path Analysis

“…The study adopted a cluster-randomized, waitlist control, single-group intervention design with randomization by school. The trial comprised a teacher training phase and an implementation phase; full details of the intervention design and content have been published previously [66]. Secondary school PE teachers (N = 29) from 11 secondary schools and their students (N = 502) were invited to participate in the study.…”

“…[1]We did not conduct an a priori statistical power analysis for the current study as the main purpose of the study was to test the intervention [66].…”