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OBJECTIVES: Research on links between social, geographic, and cultural determinants of health has been thwarted by inadequate measures of culture. The purpose of this study was to improve the measurement of community culture, defined as shared patterns of attitudes and behaviors among people within a neighborhood that distinguish it from others, and to examine dimensions of culture, independent of socioeconomic and demographic factors, and their relationships with health. STUDY DESIGN: A survey research design with correlational analyses was used. METHODS: A survey packet including the Community Culture Survey - Revised (CCS-R), demographic, health, and other individual-level measures was administered through convenience sampling across the United States (US) and to a sample in Thailand from 2016 to 2018. US county-level variables were obtained from zip codes. RESULTS: 1930 participants from 49 US states (n = 1592) and Thailand (n = 338) completed all CCS-R items, from which 12 subscales were derived: Social Support & Connectedness, Responsibility for Self & Others, Family Ties & Duties, Social Distress, Urban Diversity, Discontinuity, Church-Engaged, External Resource-Seeking, Locally Owned Business-Active, Power Deference, Next Generation Focus, and Self-Reliance. Neighborhood culture subscale scores varied more by geography than by participants demographics. All subscales predicted one or more health indicator, and some of these relationships were significant after adjusting for participant age and county-level socioeconomic variables. Most of the significant differences on subscales by race/ethnicity were no longer significant after adjusting for participants age and county-level socioeconomic variables. Most rural/urban and regional differences in culture within the US persisted after these adjustments. Based on correlational analyses, Social Support & Connectedness and Responsibility for Self & Others were the best predictors of participants overall health and quality of life, and Responsibility for Self & Others was the best predictor (inversely) of the CDCs measures of social vulnerability. CONCLUSIONS: Neighborhood culture is measurable, multi-dimensional, distinct from race/ethnicity, and related to health even after controlling for age and socioeconomic factors. The CCS-R is useful for advancing research and practice addressing the complex interactions between individuals, their neighborhood communities, and health outcomes.

The growth of the self-concept through increasing perspectives, identities, resources, and efficacy is known as self-expansion and typically involves novelty, challenge, interest, and/or excitement. Self-expansion is positively associated with health factors including self-reported physical activity (PA). This study is the first to investigate self-expansion and daily PA, and with a PA monitor. Fifty community participants completed baseline questionnaires, wore a Fitbit One and completed daily self-report questionnaires for 28 days, and completed follow-up questionnaires. Daily surveys included questions about both general and PA-specific self-expansion. Across the 4 weeks, steps taken was positively correlated with both general (all maximum likelihood r = 0.17) and PA-specific self-expansion (maximum likelihood rs of 0.15 and 0.16), and PA-specific self-expansion was positively correlated (maximum likelihood rs of 0.38 and 0.50) with aerobic activity. Future research should investigate this relationship in a larger more diverse sample and test whether PA-specific self-expansion can be utilized as an acceptable, feasible, and effective intervention to increase daily steps and other forms of PA.

This study investigated the corresponding change between psycho-social predictors and physical activity (PA) behavior and if these relationships were dependent on the stages of change from the Transtheoretical Model in Minority American adolescents. We conducted a longitudinal field study with N = 357 students aged 13-18 years (M = 14.24 years, SD = 0.88); predominantly Filipino (61.2%) using a test-retest design assessing psycho-social PA predictors (enjoyment, self-efficacy, family support, friends' support, knowledge, stage of change) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) at two time points over six months. Hierarchical regression results indicated that a positive change of enjoyment, knowledge about PA and family support predicted a change of MVPA, independently of stage. The time-varying covariation showed the importance of the current stage of change for enjoyment, self-efficacy and support of friends for a change of MVPA. Overall, our findings suggest that an individual's current stage of change should be considered to determine individually appropriate starting points and goals for designing interventions to promote PA among Minority American adolescents., Author(s): Eliane S. Engels [sup.1] , Claudio R. Nigg [sup.2] , Anne K. Reimers [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.5330.5, 0000 0001 2107 3311, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, , Gebbertstr. 123b, 91052, Erlangen, [...]

Despite the crucial role of mentoring, little literature exists that addresses distance mentoring among health researchers. This article provides three case studies showcasing protégés at different stages of career development (one in graduate school, one as an early-stage researcher, and one as an established researcher). Each case study provides a brief history of the relationship, examines the benefits and challenges of working together at a distance, and discusses the lessons learned from both the mentor and the protégé over the course of these relationships. A mentoring model, examples of mentoring communications, and potential promising practices are also provided and discussed.

Background/Objectives: As research on yoga with school children is growing, this study investigated the effects a semester of yoga versus physical education on children's physical activity and psychosocial indicators. Methods: Physical activity and psychosocial variables were assessed at Time 1 (January/February) and Time 2 (April/May) through self-report surveys (n = 157; 63% female, age: m = 10.38, sd = 0.81 years) for the intervention (Hatha yoga classes) and control groups (standard physical education classes). The intervention group was also observed regarding pedometer and System for Observing Fitness Instruction Time data. Results: The results revealed a trend towards an increase for the control and a decrease for the intervention group in stress levels. The pedometer results showed a trend towards an increasing number of steps/min. Skill practice had the greatest increase with time dedicated to that activity. The observation results revealed a significant difference in activity from Time 1 to Time 2. The major differences were decreases in sitting and being very active, and an increase in walking. Conclusions: Given the observation data and our study design limitations, the study results showed similarities between Hatha yoga and physical education in terms of increasing physical activity levels and psychosocial variables; thus, yoga may be a viable alternative to children's physical education in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the process of updating and aligning the Swiss Physical Activity (PA) guidelines with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. The Swiss guidelines were updated to reflect global recommendations while considering Switzerland's unique characteristics and cultural context. The updated guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations for Swiss citizens to lead healthier, more active lives and contribute to global efforts to improve public health. Stakeholder engagement and consultation were integral to ensuring broad acceptance and implementation of the guidelines. The article focuses specifically on movement recommendations for pregnant and postnatal women in Switzerland. [Extracted from the article]

The mediatization of communicative action is a process that centrally moderates social change. Changes in communication (e.g., through new kinds of media) thus have momentous consequences for social forms and processes. As essential cultural signs, social bodies, their medial representation, and areas of society in which bodies play a role are interrelated with changes in communication. Currently, physical self-representations in digital media play a key role and hold strong possibilities of influence on the culture of sports and movement. The aim of this study was to identify the effects of visual selfrepresentations in social media on this culture. Following an integrative review methodology, we systematically organised the current state of empirical evidence and identified the implications that digital self-representations in social media (esp., Instagram, Facebook) have on sports and movement culture and therefore possibly on physical education (PE). Six electronic databases, reference lists, and citations of full-text articles were searched for English and German language peer-reviewed articles. The search string combined different terms relating to social media and sports culture. Two independent reviewers screened all identified studies for eligibility and assessed the methodological quality of the included studies. The results point to direct changes in some sports and movement cultures such as the prosumtion (consumption and production) of videos in skateboarding or the perpetuation of body ideals in the fitness culture. Other sports and movement cultures are changed indirectly via different new use cases for the athletes, as they can use social media to either build communities or gain visibility. As the practice of prosuming bodily self-representations is a growing part of the lifeworld of adolescents, such practices could become content within PE. Therewith, students could acquire competencies that allow them to intellectually relate to these practices, which could help them in understanding, changing or transcending their existing realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital health technologies and social networking services have become an inherent part of physical activity, exercise routines and fitness training. Adolescents obtain significant parts of their health-related knowledge and beliefs from such technologies and social media, which in turn can influence how they approach sports and physical activity. These processes have been accelerated and intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic. Against this background, this paper aims to discuss the relevance of digital health education as a topic for the subject PE. First, potential benefits and risks of digital health technologies and networks are explained with a focus on adolescents as the target group for digital health education. In this context ideas and recommendations to implement digital health education in teaching practices are illustrated. It is argued that young people should be supported to develop their own critical viewpoints and attitudes towards the use of digital health technologies and networks to pursue individual health-related goals. Second, results from a qualitative interview study with 32 PE teachers in Austria regarding their perspectives on digital health education in PE are presented. The most significant findings of the survey are that asked teachers see digital technology mainly as a tool for functional health promotion and are aware of normative body representations in social networks. Some PE teachers also orchestrate PE as a counterpart to an increasingly digitalized world excluding digital technology form their lessons. However, a holistic approach to digital health education requires that the digital culture of health, body, exercise and fitness is experienced and discussed from different perspectives. In doing so, students can be enabled to use digital health technologies and networks in an informed, responsible and self-determined way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue focuses on technology and how people are making sense of this related to body, movement, exercise and health through a sport pedagogical lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies have permeated most aspects of modern life. In particular, the intersection of digitalization and physical activity has seen significant developments. Such digital technologies have become constitutive of adolescents' life, being a main source of information and a strong influence for their knowledge and behavior in physical activities. These developments have raised significant questions among educational stakeholders worldwide, providing the basis for digital education at all school levels. One of the core goals for the future is preparing the next generation to be able to use digital technologies within physical activities competently, while at the same time taking a constructive and critical perspective on the potentials and risks. The subject of physical education (PE) plays a major role in this intersection. Since it is the central role of a curriculum to act as a systematic framework for the course of learning, it is of particular interest to what extent issues of digitalization appear in PE curricula. Against this backdrop, this paper examines how digitalization is interpreted for official curriculum texts in and across current PE curricula in three German-speaking countries. A qualitative comparative document analysis has been applied. The findings demonstrate differences in what is valued in terms of digitalization and PE. Digital media appear with a predominantly functional character where media are primarily used as tools, for example, for movement analyzes aiming at improving sports skills. In addition, the critical reflection regarding the medial effects of, for example, fitness trends or body ideals embedded in media is only rarely addressed. The paper concludes that future curriculum reforms should address digitalization and PE in a more comprehensive way to empower students critically navigating through sport and movement in the digital realm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the coronavirus pandemic, physical education (PE) in schools was forced into remote forms of teaching and learning, leading to a surge in the use of digital technologies and online resources. In a larger project, we identified webpages created by PE teachers on the site Padlet.com as an important hub for the remote delivering of German-speaking PE during the pandemic. In this paper, we follow a poststructuralist perspective to investigate how students are positioned as subjects of pandemic PE through the discursive practices articulated on these webpages. Our discourse analysis of a sample of 14 webpages with a combined number of 755 posts reveals one largely uncontested discursive construction that positions students as (i) doing something during lockdown, (ii) using suggestions individually and self-responsibly, (iii) exercising, performing, fit, and (iv) predominantly able bodied, sporty, stereotypically gendered, and white. We critically discuss the narrow possibilities of becoming intelligible as an appropriate subject of pandemic PE afforded by these positionings in the context of foregoing scholarship. Concluding, we argue that even -- or especially -- when PE has been returning to its traditional co-present form, exploring how PE is socially constructed, how students are positioned, and which forms of subjectivity are privileged/marginalized in emerging PE-related online cultures is a crucial task for sport pedagogical research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sport pedagogical contexts, body, movement and experience can be seen as fundamental issues. The conceptualization of these issues--often based on anthropological, phenomenological, or otherwise philosophical considerations on how human beings act and perceive the world--is crucial for sport pedagogical work on the theoretical, practical, and empirical levels. The authors' thesis is that, in an increasingly digitized world, body, movement, and experience are gaining more and more new meanings. Therefore, this paper seeks to (re-)locate body, movement, and experience in a digitized world, confronting traditional sport pedagogical conceptualizations with philosophical and sociological considerations on digitality. The aim is to build a solid base and to open new doors for sport pedagogical work in the 21stcentury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increased health risks of a sedentary lifestyle, only 49 % of American adults participate in physical activity (PA) at the recommended levels. In an effort to move the PA field forward, we briefly review three emerging areas of PA intervention research. First, new intervention research has focused on not only increasing PA but also on decreasing sedentary behavior. Researchers should utilize randomized controlled trials, common terminology, investigate which behaviors should replace sedentary behaviors, evaluate long-term outcomes, and focus across the lifespan. Second, technology has contributed to an increase in sedentary behavior but has also led to innovative PA interventions. PA technology research should focus on large randomized trials with evidence-based components, explore social networking and innovative apps, improve PA monitoring, consider the lifespan, and be grounded in theory. Finally, in an effort to maximize public health impact, dissemination efforts should address the RE-AIM model, health disparities, and intervention costs., Author(s): Beth A. Lewis [sup.1] , Melissa A. Napolitano [sup.2] , Matthew P. Buman [sup.3] , David M. Williams [sup.4] , Claudio R. Nigg [sup.5] Author Affiliations: (1) 0000000419368657grid.17635.36School of [...]

Author(s): Claudio R. Nigg [sup.1] , Danielle E. Jake-Schoffman [sup.2] , E. Amy Janke [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) 0000 0001 1482 1895grid.162346.4Office of Public Health Studies, University of Hawaii, 1960 [...]

Non-communicable diseases (i.e., chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes and obesity) result in 36 million deaths each year. Individuals' habitual participation in a single health-risk behaviors substantially contribute to morbidity and mortality (e.g., tobacco use, daily fast food intake, etc.); however, more concerning is the impact of typically co-occurring or clustering of multiple health-risk behaviors. This burden can be minimized through successful cessation of health-risk behaviors and adoption of healthy behaviors; namely healthy lifestyle adoption or multiple health behavior change (MHBC). MHBC is a developing field and future research recommendations are provided to advance MHBC research. A valid measure of MHBC (i.e., lifestyle) is warranted to provide the needed basis for MHBC investigations and evaluations. MHBC is thought to occur through shared co-variation of underlying motivating mechanisms, but how these relationships influence behavior remains unclear. A better understanding of the relationship between behaviors and the related motivating mechanisms (and potential cross-relationship of influences) is needed. Future research should also aim to improve lifestyles through understanding how to change multiple health behaviors. Finally, MHBC research should target the development of sustainable interventions which result in lasting effects (e.g., capacity, systems, policy and environmental changes), with dissemination considered during development. Focusing MHBC research in these areas will increase our understanding and maximize the impact on the health of populations., Author(s): Karly Geller [sup.1] , Sonia Lippke [sup.2] , Claudio R. Nigg [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) 0000 0001 2195 6763grid.259956.4Department of Kinesiology and Health, Miami University, 106 Phillips Hall, 45056, [...]