Abstract

BASTOS, Fernando; REIS, Victor Machado; ARANHA, Ágata Cristina  and  GARRIDO, Nuno Domingos. Relation between sport and physical activity, BMI levels, perceptions of success and academic performance. Motri. [online]. 2015, vol.11, n.3, pp.41-58. ISSN 1646-107X.  https://doi.org/10.6063/motricidade.3771.

Overweight is increasing among the school population being physical inactivity one of its main causes. Since it is not clear what kind of attitude do overweight and obese students have towards participation in physical activity and its relationship with academic performance we intend to identify the influencing factors in the context of physical education. Participated in this study 490 students from 3^rd cycle and secondary education, divided by gender. BMI values were adjusted for sex and age and three groups were created: leanness; normal weight; and overweight. The values of the academic performance were normalized to a scale of 1 to 5 points. Participation in sporting activities, regularity of practice and perception of academic performance were measured by questionnaire. After exploratory data analysis, chi-square test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation were performed. The partial eta squared (η ²) was reported as a measure of the magnitude of the effect of the differences in the ANOVAs. We considered the value of α of 0.05. The results showed that students with overweight and thinness reported lower levels of PA compared to normal weight students (4.20±1.73, 1.77±4.6, 4.61±1.73, p=0.044, η²=0:01, resp.). Most students defined its academic success through the approval /transition from year along with good classifications, having this group obtained higher levels of PA (4.57±1.71, p=0.03). There were significant effects of BMI levels in the final average and Physical Education ratings in which normal weight students had better ratings than overweight counterparts. Furthermore, there were significant correlations between the ratings of Portuguese and Mathematics (r = 0.80, p <0.001), between classifications of Physical Education and Portuguese (r = 0:36, p <0.001), and between classifications of Physical Education and Mathematics (r = 0:42, p <0.001). Overweight students had lower levels of PA when compared to students with normal or lean weight concomitantly with lower school performance levels. Given the results we consider that practicing PA is a factor with a positive influence on the academic performance of students in basic and secondary education.

Keywords : physical activity; BMI; perceptions of success; academic performance; physical education.

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