Long-Term Effects of a Conceptual Physical Education Program

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the attitudes, knowledge, and activity behaviors of college graduates who completed a lecture-laboratory (concepts) course in physical education during their undergraduate study. Serving as controls were college graduates of the same university who transferred to the university and who received credit for a traditional rather than a concepts course. Both groups were compared to college graduates who “quizzed out” of the concepts course rather than enrolling in the class. Subjects were randomly selected from the 1977 and 1979 graduating classes. All those selected as subjects received a questionnaire containing an attitude test, a knowledge lest, and an activity checklist. Fifty-nine percent of the 300 questionnaires were returned. Multivariate analyses indicated that the concepts groups possessed attitude-knowledge-activity profiles which differed from those of either of the other groups. Though differences were not uniform for the two years studied, knowledge was consistently the greatest contributor to differences between transfer and concepts groups. Univariate and combined year analyses indicated that, though less consistent than the knowledge differences, attitude and activity differences among groups also existed. In general, the results suggested that a college level conceptual physical education class can have positive long term effects.