Graduate Research Papers
Availability
Open Access Graduate Research Paper
Abstract
With physical activity levels continuing to decrease and obesity rates continuing to increase, it is important to set specific physical activity guidelines for children to reach in order to ensure health enhancement. A step count cut-off is a specific threshold that once met, is equivalent to participation in the recommended >60minutes of moderate to vigorous activity on a daily basis. The purpose of this study is to find developmentally-specific, step count cut-offs for both boys and girls. This study focused specifically on middle school students from four schools in a Midwestern town in Iowa. There were 88 total participants: 31 girls and 37 boys in the 6th grade; 13 girls and 4 boys in the 7th grade; and 3 girls in the 8th grade. The participants wore a pedometer and accelerometer for one day. The pedometer used in the administration of this research was a YAMAX Digi-Walker SW-200. An ActiGraph GT3X accelerometer was used in the collection of intensity counts. The accelerometer was downloaded using ActiGraph software. For each child a caloric output was run using the Freedson equation (Freedson, 1997). Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were computed separately for boys and girls on the following variables: age, height, weight, BMI, and physical activity time. ROC was performed on step counts taken to determine the accelerometry classification. Step count cut-offs were determined based on two criteria: a. maximum sum of sensitivity and specificity; b. sensitivity equal or large than .80. AUC was computed to determine whether or not the test was a good diagnostic tool to differentiate between whether or not participants reached daily physical activity guidelines. Of the 47 girls, only eight girls reached the recommended daily level of physical activity. Of the 41 boys, 19 of them reached the recommended daily level of physical activity. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that middle school females take >2,642 steps/day and that middle school males take >12,201 steps/day to meet the recommended >60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity.
Year of Submission
2011
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
School of Health, Physical Education, and Leisure Services
First Advisor
Fabio Fontana
Date Original
2011
Object Description
1 PDF file (26 pages)
Copyright
©2011 Julie Zensen
Language
en
Recommended Citation
Zensen, Julie, "Identifying Step Count Cut-Offs for Middle School Students" (2011). Graduate Research Papers. 4431.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/grp/4431
Comments
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