A season-long team-building intervention: examining the effect of team goal setting on cohesion

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether the implementation of a season-long team-building intervention program using team goal setting increased perceptions of cohesion. The participants were 86 female high school basketball players from 8 teams. The teams were randomly assigned to either an experimental team goal-setting or control condition. Each participant completed the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ; Carron, Brawley, & Widmeyer, 2002; Carron, Widmeyer, & Brawley, 1985), which assessed cohesion at both the beginning and end of the season. Overall, the results revealed a significant multivariate effect, Pillai's trace F(12, 438) = 2.68, p = .002. Post hoc analyses showed that at the beginning of the season, athletes from both conditions did not differ in their perceptions of cohesion. However, at the end of the season, athletes in the team goal-setting condition held higher perceptions of cohesion than athletes in the control condition. Overall, the results indicated that team goal setting was an effective team-building tool for influencing cohesiveness in sport teams.     

Steps counts among middle school students vary with aerobic fitness level

The purpose of this study was to examine if steps/day taken by middle school students varied based on aerobic fitness classification. Middle school students (N = 223; 112 girls, 111 boys) were assigned to three aerobic fitness categories (HIGH, MOD, LOW) based on results of the FlTNESSGRAM PACER test. Four weekdays of pedometer monitoring determined activity levels (steps/day). Boys accumulated significantly more steps/day than girls, 11,589 +/- 3,270 and 10,232 +/- 2,517 steps/day, respectively; F(1,219) = 16.0, p < .001, eta2 = .055. There were no differences in steps/day between grades. HIGH fit participants accumulated significantly more steps/day, F(2, 217) = 12.2, p < .101, eta2 = .101, than moderately fit and low fit participants (approximately 1,491 and ; 2,867 steps/day, respectively). Middle school students who participated in sports in addition to physical education (PE) accumulated significantly more steps/day (approximately 980 steps/day) than those participating in PE only, F(1, 219) = 10.0, p < .01, eta2 = .044. Although the relationship between physical activity and aerobic fitness was moderate (0.35; p < .01), these data demonstrated significant differences in accumulated steps/day among youth of varying aerobic fitness levels. Whether improved fitness levels were the result of additional activity or the cause of it remains to be determined. Regardless, the fittest middle school students were also the most active and accumulated a significant amount of steps/day through organized extracurricular physical activities.     

On metrics matched to the discrete memoryless channel

A sequence of metrics {D_N} is said to be additive and matched to a discrete memoryless channel (DMC) if D_N is the sum on its coordinates of N single letter metrics and if the maximum likelihood decoder for sequences of length N is a minimum D_N-distance decoder. Necessary and sufficient conditions on the transition probabilities of a DMC for the existence of a sequence of additive metrics matched to it are given. In the case of the binary channel these are shown to be equivalent to the channel being symmetric. Explicit transition probabilities are given for a large class of ternary DMCs with an associated sequence of additive matched metrics. The problem solved here may be considered a generalization of the problem of finding the DMCs matched to the Lee metric solved by Chiang and Wolf in 1971 (2).