Physical Performance and Body Form as Related to Physical Activity of College Women

Abstract

The problems of this study were to investigate the interrelationship of selected functional and body form measures, and to examine the differences between groups varying in activity levels. The volunteers for the study, 35 college women, were placed in activity groups termed “most active” and “least active” according to their response on an activity history-recall questionnaire. Functional measures included strength and flexibility. Strength was measured with a cable tensiometer and followed the procedures outlined by H. H. Clarke. Flexibility was measured using a Leighton Flexometer. Body form measures included height, weight, percent body fat, fat free body weight, specific gravity, and ponderal index. The range, mean, and standard deviation were computed for all parameters. The Pearson product-moment correlation was employed to determine interrelationships of all variables. Equality of variances among selected parameters was determined by the F test; Cochran-Cox and two sample t tests were used to determine the equality of means among selected parameters in the activity groups. Significant differences at the .05 level were found between the means of weight, fat free body weight, trunk extension flexibility, with the most active group exhibiting higher values. The least active group showed significantly greater shoulder extension flexibility, shoulder inward rotation flexibility, and ankle flexion flexibility.     

Predicting Future Trends in Adult Fitness Using the Delphi Approach

Abstract

This study determined how experts see the future of adult fitness by using the Delphi Technique as a measurement tool. Experts (n = 50), all Fellows of the American College of Sports Medicine, were selected on the basis of their reputations in adult fitness. Three questionnaires were submitted to the panel. In the first questionnaire each expert listed five or more events, trends, or developments they thought would take place and five or more events they would like to see take place in the next 25 years. From the events and trends listed on this questionnaire, 100 items were generated that formed the basis for the last two questionnaires. Responses to the items on the second questionnaire were evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale for probability and desirability. In the third questionnaire, group means and standard deviations were calculated and recorded for each item. Only those items which were significantly (p < .01) higher than 3.0, the average probability or desirability response on the Likert scale, were included in the analysis. The items were divided into seven categories: fitness in sport and recreation, fitness and wellness, fitness in industry, fitness in education, fitness in business, research in fitness, and fitness equipment and facilities. The highest single mean for any item for both probability (M = 4.31) and desirability (M = 4.83) was increased awareness of health and fitness among the elderly.     

Teacher Perceptions of a Physical Education Statewide Assessment Program

Abstract

A statewide program assessment was established to make positive change in physical education school programs in South Carolina. Reform efforts depend both on balancing accountability for change and teacher support for change (Odden &Anderson, 1986). The purpose of the study was to determine teacher perceptions of the South Carolina Physical Education Assessment Program and its effects across six related themes including: changes in teaching and learning, changes in curriculum and instruction, teacher awareness of the assessment program, teacher support for the program, work place conditions, and the advocacy role of the program. It was also the purpose of this study to determine if the survey responses were in any way related to teacher and school variables. The overall results of the study indicated positive change and support for the assessment program, supporting the viability of the standards, assessment, and accountability reform effort to positively impact physical education programs.     

Frequency Distributions and Standards of Anthropometric and Physical Performance Measures for College Women

Abstract

Frequency distributions of the records of a random selection of 200 college women in a nonmajor required program on anthropometric and physical performance measures commonly employed in physical education were compared with best-fitting normal curves for the same data. A table of random numbers was used to secure the sample. A percentile table for the various measurements was constructed. It was concluded that various measurements commonly employed by physical educators give a non-normal distribution. Hence, the obtained distribution as found on various measurements in this study does not warrant treating these data as normal.     

The inspirited nature of mindful curricular enactment’s community (re)making

Intertwining case study with practitioner inquiry, a research team seeks language for the conduct of mindful curricular enactment in an alternative public middle school. The school is committed to valuing students’ narratives of experience, the resources all bring to the school, and the given particularities of contexts, subject matter, and situations, as the makings comprising learning within and through community. A collaborative approach to inquiry that involves all team partners in the research process and engages the unique strengths that each brings focuses on how this alternative school provides a case for accessing how and why mindful curricular enactment orients accordingly. It is the makings forming this curricular movement, and the room found within these makings to reorganize and reconstruct thinking, that primary attention is oriented towards. Deweyan ‘roominess’ negotiated through such curricular enactment is documented as mindful attention to curriculum-making that fosters the needed room—the conditions and supports sustaining an individual/collective movement of thinking. Such movement is revealed as necessarily receptive, inciting community (re)making. Its inspirited nature is revealed through participatory modes of being and associated habits embracing knowledge-making as generative, elemental to being human, in need of other(s), assuming temporal/spatial agency, and interdependent with imagination, instilling embodied understandings.     

The value of management education: Views of graduates on the benefits of doing a MBA

MBA alumni are exceptionally well placed to evaluate management education in terms of its real impacts on students against current, and expected, needs. This paper reports the results of a survey of graduates of one MBA course to identify which aspects of the course its graduates valued highly and the extent of the contribution of their MBA to career changes that have followed their completion of the course. The benefits of the program to graduates, in terms of relevance, knowledge gained, behaviour changed and outcomes achieved were judged to be substantial. The MBA is seen as a significant factor in career change and development.     

TA training: From the TA's point of view

Teaching assistants (TAs) at a major university were surveyed about the annual campus-wide and departmental TA training programs in which they had participated. Responses from these TAs differ markedly from reports based on surveys conducted with the administrators of such training programs. Current training practices can be improved by considering more seriously the TA's point of view.Janet Lee Jones received her B. A. from Pomona College in 1984, concentrating in psychology and Chinese language. Her Ph.D. was awarded in 1989 in the area of cognitive science, with a specialization in psycholinguistics. She has supervised undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants for the past five years. Dr. Jones now teaches a wide variety of psychology courses and interdisciplinary seminars at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.