THE IMPACT OF HEALTH-RELATED FITNESS AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG ELEMENTARY STUDENTS

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sawhney. C, The Impact of Health-Related Fitness on Academic Performance in Elementary Students. Doctor of Education (Executive Educational Leadership), May 2020, Houston Baptist University, Houston, Texas. Purpose The purpose of this study was to quantitatively examine the impact of obesity on academic performance in elementary students. The importance of researching this question stemmed from the following five points: a) the global prevalence of obesity, b) the overarching demographic nature of excess fat accumulation c) Texas’ overweight and obesity rate of 33.3% in 10- to 17-year-old children and adolescents, d) the near zero (0.03% in women, and 0.01% in men) percent probability of halting obesity by 2050 in U.S., and e) the premium placed on education in the U.S., which accounted for more than $12,000 annually per student from 2005 to 2015. Methodology Body mass index information from the Cooper FitnessGram® and reading and mathematics scores from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness were used for analysis. Data from a total of 1,027 schools, representative of a district in the northcentral and southeast region of Texas, for the academic years of 2012 – 2013, and 2013 – 2014 was used to substantiate findings. Findings Of the many findings, the independent-samples t-test showed that there was not a significant year cohort effect on health-related fitness, where BMI (obese) (t(2902) = - .298, p = .766), and BMI Healthy Fitness Zone (t(2902) = -.058, p = .954) values were observed. A student’s biological sex, on the other hand, impacted achievement in both reading and mathematics, where girls outperformed boys in reading by 6.3 percentage points (t(3052) = -28.801, p = .000), and by 0.67 percentage points in mathematics (t(3052) = -2.267, p = .023). Post-hoc analysis found a significant main effect of grade level on both health-related fitness and academic performance, supporting the inference that students were getting less healthy as they were advancing by grade level. Conclusions In the present study, high-risk BMI students achieved higher scores on STAAR Reading and Math than their healthy BMI peers. A downward trend in health-related fitness was also observed, were higher percentage of students fell in the obese category as they progressed to grades four and five, from 39% in grade three to 41% in grades four and five, respectively. These results aligned, both in terms of academics and health-related fitness, with prior studies. This study also noted that the dangers of carrying excess body weight negatively impacted quality of life at the individual level, while presenting an economic vulnerability and a national security threat at the aggregate levels. KEYWORDS: Academic performance, biopsychosocial, body mass index, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, health-related fitness, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, National Center for Education Statistics, and World Health Organization.