Can school health education improve students' physical exercise time? Empirical research based on CEPS (2014-2015) survey data

Huamei Zhong; Jingjing Zhou; Dan Xu; Tianbiao Liu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1054275

Can school health education improve students' physical exercise time? Empirical research based on CEPS (2014-2015) survey data

Front Psychol. 2022 Dec 22:13:1054275. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1054275. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Huamei Zhong¹, Jingjing Zhou², Dan Xu³, Tianbiao Liu⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Physical Education and Sport Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China.
² School of Statistics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, Beijing, China.
³ Department of Physical Education, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Beijing, Beijing, China.
⁴ College of Physical Education and Sports Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Purpose: School health education is an effective strategy for cultivating adolescent physical exercise habits by transmitting healthy knowledge; it helps to form healthy behaviours and encourages students to participate in physical exercise. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between school health education and student participation in physical exercise.

Methods: CEPS (China Education Penal Survey, 2014-2015) survey data were used to empirically analyse the impact of school health education on the time that students spend on physical exercise and the underlying mechanism of influence.

Results: The results showed that receiving a school health education increased the time that students spent on physical exercise. 1) Compared with receiving health education in only primary school or secondary school, receiving health education in both primary and secondary school had a greater impact on students spending time on physical exercise. 2) Receiving a school health education improved the time that students spend on physical exercise by improving students' health perception and their sports interests. 3) Receiving a school health education had a more obvious impact on the physical exercise time of male students, nonrural resident students, and students from multi-child households. These findings can provide a reference for the seasonable settings of health education curriculum in schools.

Keywords: health education; health perception; physical exercise time; school; sports interest.