The Effect of Increased Physical Activity on Adolescents' Health and Academic Performance: The School in Motion Study (ScIM)

Norwegian School of Sport Sciences

Status: Completed

Conditions: Physical Activity; Academic Achievement; Mental Health

Treatments: Behavioral: Physical activity; Behavioral: Physical active learning; Behavioral: Be happy; Behavioral: Physical education

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03817047

2207ScIM

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study evaluates the effect of 120 minutes extra of physical education (PE) or physical activity (PA) on adolescents' physical health, mental health, academic performance and learning environment. This is a cluster-randomized controlled trial with three arms, where the participants in two of the groups will have different models of increased PE/PA during the school week, whereas the participants in the third arm is the control group including current practice.

Full description

This is a school-based, three-arm cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) recruiting adolescents from secondary schools in Norway. Adolescents (aged 14-15 years) were the unit of analysis, and schools (clusters) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions:

1. the physical active learning group (PAL-group), where the schools each week include one additional physical education (PE) lesson, 30 minutes of physical active learning, and 30 minutes of physical activity (intervention condition);
2. the don't worry - be happy group (DWBH-group), where the schools include one new activity class (60 minutes: Be Happy class) and one additional PE-class (60 minutes: Don't Worry class) per week (intervention condition);or
3. current practice (control condition). An identical set of outcome measures are taken from all participants at baseline, and approximately 12 months after the baseline measures, when the participants were at the end of year 9

Enrollment: 2,045 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Subjects enrolled in 9th grade

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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2,045 participants in 3 patient groups

Physical active learning (PAL)

Experimental group

Description:

Three components: 1. Physical education (60 minutes) 2. Physical active learning (30 minutes) 3. Physical activity (30 minutes)

Treatment:

Behavioral: Physical education

Behavioral: Physical activity

Behavioral: Physical active learning

Don't worry - be happy

Experimental group

Description:

Two components: 1. Physical education (60 minutes) - don't worry class 2. Physical activity (60 minutes) - be happy class

Treatment:

Behavioral: Physical education

Behavioral: Be happy

Control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Current practice