The effects of a 10-week personal fitness course on the attitudes and behaviors of community college students

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effects of a 10-week treatment of lecture/discussion and physical activity on the attitudes of community college students toward physical fitness and on their physical fitness behaviors. Using a pre-course, post-course quasi-experimental approach, a total of 88 students from three community colleges completed a physical activity attitudes and behaviors questionnaire prior to and following participation in a 10-week personal fitness course and an additional 102 students enrolled in an English Composition course completed the pre and post-course questionnaire without participation in a personal fitness course. The research questions for this study were the following: (1) Do students at a community college who complete a 10-week personal fitness course change their attitudes and behaviors toward physical fitness? (2) Do the attitudes and behaviors of community college male and female students regarding physical fitness differ significantly prior to, and after completing a 10-week personal fitness course?; Significant changes in the students' attitudes toward physical fitness and in their exercise behaviors following the ten-week treatment of lecture/discussion and physical activity were assessed using T-test analysis. In addition, to determine if differences existed between males and females with regard to changes in attitudes and behaviors following the ten-week treatment, T-test analysis was conducted. For all T-test analysis performed, significance was established at an alpha level of .05. SPSS version 14.0 software was used to perform all statistical analysis.; The results indicate that the ten-week personal fitness course significantly improved the attitudes of those enrolled toward physical fitness in addition to causing a significant improvement in their physical fitness behaviors (P<.05). It was also discovered that the attitudes toward physical fitness and the fitness behaviors of males and females significantly improved following the personal fitness course (P<.05). Additionally, significant differences between the males and females were observed prior to and following the personal fitness course (P<.05) as well as between the treatment and control groups pre and post-course (P<.05).