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Introduction: There are two primary routes to become a physical education (PE) teacher in the United States of America: Through a traditional physical education teacher education (PETE) program and through an alternative teacher preparation program. Both require pre-service teachers (PTs) to pass state-specific and/or national examinations before a desired licensure can take place. Once completed the degree program and met examination requirements, PTs are eligible to apply for any PE positions at K-12 schools in the state (s). According to SHAPE America (2017), PTs should be able to demonstrate competence in six standards by the time they graduate from the PETE program. Previous research has indicated the use of content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and fitness and skill proficiency to assess PTs' competence. However, limited research has been conducted to explore first-year employment after graduation or the relationship between PTs' competence and their job attainment in PE. This study intended to examine the association between PTs' competence and their first-year job attainment in PE. Methods: Participants were 31 PTs who completed their undergraduate degrees in the PETE program at a regional university in the southeastern USA between the 2015-16 and 2018-19 academic years. The participants' content knowledge in Kinesiology subdisciplines and health-related areas, content knowledge in sports/physical activities and skill proficiency, and pedagogical content knowledge were collected through the calculation of grade point average (GPA) in respective courses. The participants' fitness proficiency was evaluated using five testing items from Cooper Institute's Fitnessgram® and then categorized as "excellent", "acceptable" or "unacceptable" based on the number of passing scores. The participants' first-year employment was collected by asking whether or not they took a full-time PE teaching position in K-12 school settings via emails and phone calls. The three continuous and one categorical data, as independent variables, were analyzed to identify any significant relationship with the dependent variable (1 = employed in PE, 0 = not employed in PE) using a multiple logistic regression and Fisher's exact test. Results: The participants had the highest GPA in pedagogical content knowledge (3.55), followed by content knowledge in sports/physical activities and skill proficiency (3.53) and content knowledge in Kinesiology courses (3.11). There was an overall passing rate of 71% for the participants who demonstrated "excellent" and "acceptable" fitness proficiency. More than half of the participants (58.1%) became full-time PE teachers at K-12 school settings. Lastly, the participants' content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and their fitness and skill proficiency had no significant effect on their first-year job attainment in PE. Conclusion: This study was limited to the small sample size, the use of Fitnessgram® as the assessment battery, and the title of the position defined. Future research could (a) collect a larger sample size with more than one PETE program across the USA or internationally, (b) administer a fitness test that has national criterion-referenced standards for college students, (c) define the position in a broader term such as "physical educator," and (d) collect qualitative data to discover the various reasons whether or not and how they became physical educators. Such attempts may yield different results and produce a more appropriate representation of the target population in this line of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Studies that use electronic health databases as research material are getting popular but the influence of a single electronic health database had not been well investigated yet. The United Kingdom's General Practice Research Database (GPRD) is one of the few electronic health databases publicly available to academic researchers. This study analyzed studies that used GPRD to demonstrate the scientific production and academic impact by a single public health database. Methodology and Findings: A total of 749 studies published between 1995 and 2009 with 'General Practice Research Database' as their topics, defined as GPRD studies, were extracted from Web of Science. By the end of 2009, the GPRD had attracted 1251 authors from 22 countries and been used extensively in 749 studies published in 193 journals across 58 study fields. Each GPRD study was cited 2.7 times by successive studies. Moreover, the total number of GPRD studies increased rapidly, and it is expected to reach 1500 by 2015, twice the number accumulated till the end of 2009. Since 17 of the most prolific authors (1.4% of all authors) contributed nearly half (47.9%) of GPRD studies, success in conducting GPRD studies may accumulate. The GPRD was used mainly in, but not limited to, the three study fields of "Pharmacology and Pharmacy", "General and Internal Medicine", and "Public, Environmental and Occupational Health". The UK and United States were the two most active regions of GPRD studies. One-third of GRPD studies were internationally co-authored. Conclusions: A public electronic health database such as the GPRD will promote scientific production in many ways. Data owners of electronic health databases at a national level should consider how to reduce access barriers and to make data more available for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]