The Relationship Between Middle School Students’ Body Mass Index and Attitudes Towards Physical Education

Nearly two-thirds of adults (Flegal, Carroll, Ogden, & Curtin, 2010) and nearly one-third of the children (Ogden, Carroll, Curtin, Lamb, & Flegal, 2010) in the United States are obese or overweight. The prevalence of overweight and obese young people in the state of Georgia is in part due to low levels of physical activity as approximately one-third of high school students received daily physical education and less than half met the daily recommendations for physical activity (Center for Disease Control, 2008). The purpose of the study was to determine if there was a relationship between middle grades students’ body composition and attitudes toward physical education. The participants (N = 100) consisted of males (n = 50) and females (n = 50) in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades from a middle school in the Southeastern United States. Measures of Body Mass Index (BMI) were taken from participants during the regular physical education instructional time. A twenty question attitude scale developed by Subramaniam and Silverman (2000) was modified to examine students’ attitudes toward physical education (see Appendix). The mean of all attitude surveys was 76.83 (SD = 14.12) with mean scores of 72.16 (SD – 14.47) for females and 81.5 (SD = 12.21) for males. The mean of all BMI calculations was 23 (SD = 5.35) Female BMI mean was 24.6 (SD =5.48) and male BMI was 21.4 (SD = 4.75). A Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for the relationship between participants’ Body Mass Index and attitude toward physical education. A very weak correlation that was not significant was found (r (98) = .019, p \u3e .05)