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Using Pedometers to Increase Activity Levels in WV School Children : |
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HSTA Clubs: Greenbrier West High, Jefferson High, Shady Springs High, Webster Springs High, Braxton High
Teacher Investigators: Merin Trickett, James Kilbane, Karen Emery, Janet Morton, Cathy McSwain, Jill Lemon.
Abstract
HSTA is offering an opportunity to a limited number of schools to participate and run a 4-week pedometer based research project. The project will be an incredible opportunity for HSTA clubs to increase the physical activity of students in their schools through use of pedometers and is also a great opportunity to learn about how to conduct a research project. HSTA clubs will recruit 30-40 interested students to participate in a walking club, each participant will receive a pedometer. Week one will involve surveying the interested students and collecting a baseline step count. For the remainder of the project, students will be split into two groups, intervention and control. The control group will continue to monitor their weekly step count. The intervention group will monitor step count, but will also be given material that instructs them how to increase the number of steps they take. At the end of the four weeks, a comparison will be made between the groups. Each school interested in participating should write a letter to HSTA explaining how this project will promote physical activities in their schools.
Problem
The problem that is addressed by "Using Pedometers to Increase Activity Levels in WV School Children" project is the lack of physical activity that high school students engage in.
The project used walking clubs, pedometers and educational material to increase physical activity of the students.
1. To increase the physical activity of the students through walking.
2. To expose HSTA Students to the research process .
3. To make the school community aware of the importance of the physical activity.
Activities
Teachers will be required to:
- Submit a letter of interest by October 27, 2003*
- Complete online ethics training from WVU
- Initiating recruitment of participants including publicity
- Organizing and delegating responsibilities for the students
- Overseeing data collection and database management
- Complete a process journal during the project (different needs).Students will be required to:
- Complete online ethics training from WVU
- Help recruit participants
- Publicize the project and make materials for posting around the school
- Perform data collection, recording, and management
- Remind participants to wear pedometers
- Develop a Power Point presentation for the spring workshop
Note: This project requires the participation of at least 4 HSTA student (8-10 maximum)Handouts
The weekly handouts for the intervention group will be progressive in their content. These handouts will be developed by HSTA and distributed to schools to standardize the intervention. Topics will include:
- Recommended steps
- Calories expended walking
- Ways to increase steps
- Goal-setting strategies
Week 1
Group – split based on pre-measures
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Monday
-Initial meeting
-Pedometers given out
-Pre-measure assessment
-Baseline step count
-Send us data file
Group 1
-Collect step count
-Handout 1
-State a goal for week 1 & record goal
-Collect step count
-State a goal for week 2& record goal
-Collect step count
-State a goal for week 3& record goal
Collect Step count
Group 2
-Collect step count
-Little reinforcement
-Collect step count
-Little reinforcement
-Collect step count
-Little reinforcement
Collect Step count
-provide control group with handouts
*Note, HSTA students will give out handouts
*Pedometers should be worn all week, and each step count will occur on the Monday morning
*HSTA students will use some form of medium to remind the participating students to wear their pedometers – announcements, signs, and or personal phone calls
Research Question/Question Type:
The specific question a student poses:
There are three basic types of questions that can be posed:
Descriptive. Your question is called descriptive if you simply want to describe what is going on or what the current state of affairs is for a particular issue. For example, if you were trying to determine the percent of students in your school who are not physically active or the “walkability”of your community, you would pose a descriptive question. Other examples include:
- What are the greatest barriers to physical activity as
perceived by our target population at the beginning of our program?- What is the nature and content of the educational sessions that we provide to our participants?
- What are the barriers that we encounter in delivering our program?
- What activities emerge as features for our project web site?
Relational. Your question is called relational if you want to look at the relationships between two or more variables. For example, if you were interested in knowing who (males or females) reports more barriers to physical activity, you would compare the responses of males and females and in doing so would be exploring the relationship between gender and barriers to physical activity.
Causal. Your question is called causal questions if you want to determine whether one or more variables causes or affects another variable. For example, if you were interested in determining whether the physical activity educational sessions (cause) you provided actually change people’s level of physical activity (effect), you would pose a causal question. Another question might be: In what ways do the perceptions of barriers to physical activity change pre to post in our target population?
After writing your question in the first column, think about your particular question and insert which type (descriptive, relational, causal) you think it is in the second column.
Data Source: This refers to where you will get the data to answer your question. Is it from a survey, interview, focus group, or pedometer? Insert the source of your data in column 3 and be sure to include from whom or what (students, teachers, males, females, neighborhoods) the data were obtained.
Sampling: Sampling refers to how the people or neighborhoods or whatever you are studying, got in your study in the first place. Think about how you obtained your sample. Was it randomly selected (drawing names out of a hat, computer generated) or is your sample a convenience sample (whoever signed up) or is your sample a purposive sample (woman over the age of 18 who are at least 20 lbs. overweight)? Insert the type of sampling method used in your study in the 4 th column.
Design: Design refers to how research is organized. Design issues can get quite complicated, so for our purposes, we’re going to talk about the two types of designs that the majority of HSTA research questions will fall under:
1 ) non-experimental; and
2) quasi-experimental
Non-experimental means exactly what is says…there is no experiment. All your descriptive questions will fall under the non-experimental design category. Quasi-experimental also means exactly what it says—“quasi” means “sort of,” so a quasi-experimental design involves a kind of experiment in which you are collecting data multiple times (pre and post). It is called “quasi,” because it does not involve random assignment. If a study used random assignment it would be called a true or randomized experimental design. None of the HSTA projects are using random assignment, so we’re not going to deal with that design.
So, if your research question is purely descriptive and does not involve any cause and effect issues, put the words “non-experimental” in the 5 th column labeled “design.” If however, your research question is about cause and effect, “did our intervention change people’s knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, etc., then put the words “quasi-experimental” in the 5 th column.
Sample Size: This refers to the actual number of people/neighborhoods in your study and is usually listed as “n=.” Insert the “n” for your research in the 6 th column.
Proposed Analysis: This refers to what you are going to do with your data in order to answer your research question. There are basically two types of analysis: 1) descriptive statistics and 2) inferential statistics.
Descriptive Statistics: are used to describe the data. They provide simple summaries about the sample and the measures. Include frequency distributions, measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion
Inferential Statistics: are used to investigate questions and hypotheses.
Developed on June 25, 04 by Sohail Khan