Doctoral student Zachary Pope, together with assistant professor Zan Gao, Ph.D., and associate professor Beth Lewis, Ph.D., all from the School of Kinesiology, published an article in the latest issue of the Journal of Physical Activity and Health titled “Using the Transtheoretical Model to Examine the Effects of Exergaming on Physical Activity among Children.” Mr. Pope is the lead author on the article.

The study employed an innovative physical activity intervention, exergaming, in a sample of elementary school children, while also assessing changes from pretest to posttest in the children’s stages of readiness for change within the Transtheoretical Model. Specifically, the authors were interested in how the novel exergaming intervention, which utilized the game Dance Dance Revolution, affected a child’s physical activity self-efficacy and decisional balance from pretest to posttest. Findings from this study were significant in that  very little research has analyzed the Transtheoretical Model in samples of children. In addition, no known study has used the model to evaluate the effectiveness of an exergaming intervention. The article can be found at the following link: http://journals.humankinetics.com/jpah-current-issue