School Physical Activity Pre & Post Pandemic Covid19 In Secondary Education, YAPS Questionnaire

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The Covid-19 pandemic triggered drastic changes in behavior during school education, directly affecting the promotion of healthy habits and movement inside the home and out of school related to hypokinetic behavior due to the limitation of space, the use of outdoor environments and limitation in daily life displacements. The purpose of the study is to identify changes in the behavior of physical activity pre-post Covid-19 pandemic, during the school and out-of-school day. METHODOLOGY: A descriptive study pre(2021-1) and post(2021-2) Covid-19 pandemic was used, associated to physical activity. A total of 181 schoolchildren (87F-94M) participated, with mean age 14.2 ± 1.6. All the participants belonged to an educational institution in Colombia. The time in minutes per day (min/day) of physical activity during the school and out-of-school day and additionally the YAPS score of sedentary habits were included. Compliance with assumptions was verified to develop parametric comparison tests, using the paired t-student test and the R programming language. RESULTS: Physical activity during the school day was reported as 46.5 ± 11.8(min/day) pre and 45.8 ± 9.4(min/day) post, the comparison test between the two averages indicates that there is no difference (p-value:0.2385) in the times between the two moments. After-school 46.3 ± 7.6(min/day)pre and 46.5 ± 7.3(min/day) post(p-value:0.2385). Regarding the behavior of sedentary habits -1.0 ± 0.6pre and -1.3 ± 0.7post (p-value:0.0001). Comparing pre-post in each age group (G1:12-13,G2:14-15, G3:16-17years), it was found that there was no change in the activity outside school or the index of sedentary habits. CONCLUSIONS: in the comparison of the reports of school physical activity practice, pre-post pandemic, there was no change in the daily time spent in school, nor in sedentary habits. G1 was the only group that recorded differences in physical activity pre-post pandemic during the school day.