By Lynn Gettleman Chehab and Betsy Pfeffer. Sponsored by Matilde Irigoyen.

 

Background:   Regular exercise is an important component of obesity prevention.  While it is understood that inner-city children face significant challenges to physical activity both in and outside of school, less is known about their own perspectives concerning exercise.

 

Objective:  To identify incentives challenges to the out-of-school exercise among sixth grade students at an inner-city public school.

 

Methods:   We conducted three structured focus groups of 8-9 sixth grade students (n=26) each in a New York City public school. An equal number of boys and girls were selected to participate by their teachers from classrooms where 35-45% of students have body mass indices greater than 85^th percentile for age.  The students were 11 and 12 years old, predominantly African American and Latino.  We used prompts to ask students to define exercise, tell us what they do for exercise,  discuss what makes exercise more fun what keeps them from exercising,  and where and when is exercise most convenient. Each group had one moderator and 2-3 observers. Data was analyzed with post-session, moderator-observer debriefing techniques.

 

Results:  We identified multiple common themes and theoretical saturation was reached by the second focus group.  The children associated exercise with organized sports and activities or as “something for overweight people”. Girls cited dance, double-dutch, and basketball as their most routine forms of exercise; boys cited basketball, baseball, and running.  Barriers to regular exercise were identified as chores, television, lack of space at home, family babysitting duties, “getting sweaty”, and bad weather. Incentives for exercise were activities that are “fun” or “more like a game”, activities that are easy to do, the involvement of friends, and the use of prizes.  Most children agreed that school was the most convenient place for exercise.

 

Conclusions:  This qualitative study provides insight into the preteen perspective of exercise and is a starting point for future research and advocacy. Our findings suggest that school is the best place for inner-city children to engage in regular physical activity, and that in order to be more effective, traditional physical education classes need to be expanded and better presented as playful and fun.

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