Implementation and Evaluation of a School-Based Educational Program Targeting Healthy Diet and Exercise (DIEX) for Greek High School Students

The present study examined the effectiveness of a school-based health education program promoting healthy diet and exercise, named DIEX, implemented on adolescents. The program is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and is supported by life skills training. The recipients of the program were high school students (n = 367; 168 boys and 199 girls) from 14 schools in Greece who attended 10 1 h sessions implemented by their schoolteachers. Data were collected before and after the program implementation through online questionnaires for: a. attitude, intention, subjective norms, and PBC toward healthy eating; b. knowledge about healthy eating; c. exercise behavior and attitude toward the DIEX program; and d. satisfaction with the DIEX program (only post-program). The results showed that there were significant differences among the pre- and post-measures of students’ knowledge and behavior about healthy diet, as well as attitudes and satisfaction toward the program’s application. The results show that the DIEX program may have improved nutrition behavior variables. Conclusively, a theory-based behavioral intervention with skills training may result in positive behavioral changes for young students during health education in school settings with the assistance of new technologies. © 2022 by the authors

Physical education motivational climate, on the achievement goals, and intrinsic motivation of students: a multilevel approach

This study examined whether the perceived motivational climate was associated with students' achievement goals and intrinsic motivation, from a multilevel (i.e., individual- and school-level) perspective within the Physical Education context. The sample was composed of 9855 students aged 10-18 (M-age = 13.96 years; SDage = 1.97 years) who belong to 237 different teachers from seven European countries. We used measures for teacher's motivational climate, achievement goals, and intrinsic motivation. After testing for cross-country invariance, results from the mediated structural equation model showed that partial mediation was the most suitable solution. Predictions from the accepted model supported theoretical predictions, suggesting a strong positive mediating role of task orientation between achievement goals and intrinsic motivation, while the role of ego orientation remained more ambiguous. Our findings also highlight the relevance of students' individual experiences in shaping their perception of the emphasised motivational climate, as well as reveal an additive effect in the prediction from task orientation to intrinsic motivation due to cluster belongingness. We discuss these results with other variables that might affect students' perceptions such as teacher-student relationship and motivational contagion and encourage future research to keep studying the construction of the students' perception of the teacher's emphasised motivational climate from a multilevel perspective