A Study on Attitudes toward Physical Education Courses

Abstract

The present study was designed (a) to develop an instrument using factor analysis based on data from 600 boys and girls, to assess group attraction among junior high school students in physical education classes, and (b) to examine, in the following way, the relation between attitudes toward physical education courses (assessed by the Kobayashi Physical Education Inventory) and group attraction. The contigency testing was done on the results of questionnaires administered to the students of 94 physical education classes in some junior high schools.The results obtained were as follows:1) In the factor analysis of the group-attraction questionnaire, the first factor suggested that students chose colleagues primarily on the basis of the way the colleagues accomplished tasks, and the second factor indicated that students also made such choices on the basis of friendliness of the colleagues.2) To make a model on which to generate a criterion for judging group attraction, we calculated indexes based on the results of the group-attraction questionnaire. The mean plus or minus 0.5 standrd deviation of each index, determined from the 94 classes, provided an “intermediate” range for classifying the relative value of a given index. If the value of an index exceeds this range, it is considered “high”, and if the value of that index is below the corresponding intermediate range, it is considered “low”.3) Based on the relative rankings of the various indexes, group attraction could be classified into six degrees.4) In examining the relation between group attraction and attitudes toward physical education courses, we found that “high” group attraction was associated with high attitude scores, but low group attraction was not so clearly associated with low attitude scores. Instead, an “unbalance” in group attraction, that is, choice of colleagues on the basis of the way the colleagues accomplish tasks rather than on friendliness of the colleagues, or vice versa, was more clearly associated with low attitude scores.5) We suggested that the attitude scores increased higher by progress in group attraction.