Pilot intervention to increase physical activity among sedentary urban middle school girls: a two-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design

Abstract

The primary purpose of the study was to determine whether girls in one school receiving nurse counseling plus an after-school physical activity club showed greater improvement in physical activity, cardiovascular fitness, and body composition than girls assigned to an attention control condition in another school (N = 69). Linear regressions controlling for baseline measures showed no statistically significant group differences, but the directionality of differences was consistent with greater intervention group improvement for minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity/hour (t = 0.95, p = .35), cardiovascular fitness (t = 1.26, p = .22), body mass index (BMI; t = -1.47, p = .15), BMI z score (t = -1.19, p = .24), BMI percentile (t = -0.59, p = .56), percentage body fat (t = -0.86, p = .39), and waist circumference (t = -0.19, p = .85). Findings support testing with a larger sample.

Conflict of interest statement

DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTERESTS

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1

Flow diagram of participant recruitment and retention