Assignment task:
Were repeated measures well explained in this summary?
The repeated measures experiment I found looked to answer whether "green exercise" will have a greater effect on self esteem, enjoyment, and perceived effort compared to "urban exercise" among children. Green exercise refers to physical activity in a natural environment and showed significant effects on self esteem in adults leading these authors wondering if it could be used in children who are most at risk to develop a mental disorder. The IV is the environment of exercise and the DVs are self esteem, enjoyment and perceived effort with the expected outcome being significant increase. The authors used a repeated measures to see the impact of green exercise within subjects rather than between subjects making it the best choice for the design of the study. Because exercise level, self esteem, enjoyment, and perceived effort can vary dramatically from person to person, testing the same subjects pre and post exercise provided informative results. Researchers found no significant effect on any of the DVs when comparing the green exercise group to the control group. One explanation for this is that children are less and less connected with nature as the generations go by (Reed, et al, 2013). The authors recognized that the nature of the "green exercise" may cause children to exert more energy making it a great tool to engage children in more moderate to vigorous physical activity. With a lack of association between physical activity and enjoyment, green exercise could also be used to engage less active children into exercising more (Reed, et al, 2013). I believe this study could be built off of by providing students an environment engaging intervention prior to exercise. With children growing up in the technology age, they have less motivation to surround themselves in a natural environment leaving them with little exposure to the benefits nature provides on overall health.
References:
Reed, K., Wood, C., Barton, J., Pretty, J. N., Cohen, D., & Sandercock, G. R. H. (2013). A repeated measures experiment of green exercise to improve self-esteem in UK school children. PLoS ONE, 8(7).