Affecting factors of health-related physical fitness: Knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy, exercise habits, and weight status among middle school students in Taiwan

[[abstract]]This study aimed to explore the possible factors, including knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy, and weight status and how these factors affect Health-Related Physical Fitness, HRPF among middle school students in Taiwan. Results of this study can provide the government a better direction of policy making on improving HRPF and fill the gap of the relationship between HRPF and knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy, exercise habits, and weight status in the literature. Methods: Data of this study included survey data and fitness test data. In order to ensure participants were representative of the population, participants were selected based on stratified cluster random sampling from 7th to 9th grader in 2014 academic year throughout Taiwan. Taiwan was separated into 4 geographic areas, which include north, center, south, and east, and the number of participants were decided based on the students proportion of each area. A total of 2,493 questionnaires were randomly distributed. Among these, 1,763 valid respondents were collected with 70.72% return rate. Regards to the fitness test data, Taiwanese high school students are mandatory to participate in the fitness test each year under MOE policy. Results: Among 4 HRPF items, male students performed better than female students only in muscular endurance. Flexibility was the easiest test in both male and female students. In regards to the Body Mass Index (BMI), 23.4% were overweight or obese. Male students (25.7%) possessed higher overweight or obese rate than female students (21%). Regarding to the exercise habits, 25.5 % of male students reached the 333 plan while 9.2% of female students reached that goal. Additionally, knowledge, attitude, and self-efficacy all significantly impacted HRPF positively. But the self-efficacy was excluded in the model. The two-way interaction terms did not show significant effects in both male and female students. Concussions: Overall, HPRF among Taiwanese middle school students have been improved since 1999 MOE promoted HRPF improvement plans. However, this study found the obesity problem among Taiwanese middle school students remained and the regular exercise habits was not enough especially among female students. This study suggested fitness-knowledge, attitude and exercise habits acted important factors affecting HRPF among middle school students.[[conferencetype]]國際[[booktype]]電子版[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]日本/札榥