Physical Literacy Competency Among Elementary and Middle School Children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Physical literacy addresses the ability, confidence and desire needed to optimize physical activity participation. Ability to perform, or competency in, fundamental movement skills, has not been recently evaluated among children in the United States, which is essential for identifying needs for intervention. PURPOSE: To compare physical literacy competency between sexes and age groups in children. METHODS: 288 children (134 males, 153 females; age 9±2 years; height 132±36 cm; mass 41±14 kg) from 6 schools volunteered to participate. Participants completed tasks in a randomized order to assess five domains of physical literacy competency: locomotor, running, balance, upper extremity (UE) and lower extremity (LE) object control. Trained raters evaluated competency using a standardized, valid and reliable assessment (PLAYfun; Canadian Sport for Life). Participants were divided into age groups (Elementary: grades K-4; Middle: grades 5-8). Competency on all tasks was measured using a 0-100 continuous scale. Total average score and domain average scores were compared between sexes and age groups using a multivariate analysis of variance (α<.05). RESULTS: There were no significant interactions between sexes and age groups (p>.05). Regardless of age, males demonstrated greater competency than females for overall score (mean±SE points: males=71.5±1.0, females=63.7±1.0; p<.001), running (males=75.4±1.8, females=63.72±1.80; p<.001), UE object control (males=73.32±1.71, females=56.4±1.7; p<.001), and LE object control (males=66.9±2.0, females=52.3±2.0; p<.001). Regardless of sex, Middle had greater competency than Elementary for overall score (Middle=62.2±1.0, Elementary=73.0±0.9; p<.001), locomotor (Middle=75.3±1.17, Elementary=65.0±1.3; p<.001), balance (Middle=77.4±1.3, Elementary=62.1±1.3; p<.001), UE object control (Middle=70.0±1.6, Elementary=59.8±1.8; p<.001), and LE object control (Middle=67.9±1.9, Elementary=51.2±1.8; p<.001). CONCLUSIONS: Sex differences in physical literacy are present among children in the United States, especially in tasks involving object control. Similarly, over 20% of children in middle school lack competency in object control tasks. These areas need to be addressed in order to optimize long-term physical activity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".