The effects of a one-year school-based physical activity promotion in a sample secondary school students

The promotion of physical activity (PA) has become a universal challenge, as relatively small percentage of children and adolescents meet the current physical activity recommendations. Fortunately, schools are an ideal setting for promoting, because schools can reach a full range of individuals in a population at no additional cost to the community. The aim of the study was to examine to what extent a one-year school-based two-treatment PA promotion (Task Promotion: to encourage task supporting teaching practices to increase students task orientation in PE; PA promotion: to increase students’ PA participation during school-days and out-of-school PA) impacts Finnish middle school students’ PA participation. The sample comprised 847 students aged between 12- to 14-years in health promotion (n = 208) and control group (n = 639). The present findings suggested that the school-initiated PA promotion model effectively brought about positive changes in students’ PA during school-days and out-of-school PA participation. In contrast, students’ PA in control group decreased across the certain period of time. Following the present and previous findings, PA promotion and Task Promotion should be used in combination to optimize and enrich the quality of the future school-initiated health promotions.