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Contemporary School Playground Strategies for Healthy Students pp 93–106Cite as

Measurement of Students’ Playground Activity Levels

Abstract

Accurate measurement of students’ physical activity levels is important to determine the contribution physical activity within school playgrounds can make towards students meeting recommended daily physical activity guidelines . Assessment of physical activity is also conducted to examine the effectiveness of strategies targeting students’ physical activity within school playgrounds and to identify psychosocial and environmental factors that can affect students’ physical activity behaviour within school playgrounds. There are a number of measures that can be used effectively within the school playground context to assess the dimensions (frequency , intensity , duration , activity type ) of students’ physical activity including direct observation , accelerometers , pedometers , global positioning systems (GPS) and self-reporting instruments.

Keywords

  • Measurement
  • Physical activity
  • Playgrounds

‘As all measurement methods have limitations, it is important that a combination of measures are employed to measure children’s physical activity within school playgrounds ’

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  1. School of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, QLD, 4225, Australia

    Brendon Hyndman

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    Brendon Hyndman

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Hyndman, B. (2017). Measurement of Students’ Playground Activity Levels. In: Hyndman, B. (eds) Contemporary School Playground Strategies for Healthy Students. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4738-1_9

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