Measuring Physical Activity in Youth Settings: Considerations for Instrument Selection

Increasing physical activity participation has become one of the primary strategies for prevention of early-onset health conditions including obesity and Type II diabetes. Youth programs including summer camps and after-school programs are premium providers of physical activity opportunities, but researchers and administrators of these programs must be able to effectively collect and interpret physical activity data to make program adjustments and communicate results. This article reviews existing methods for physical activity measurement including self-reports and objective instruments and makes suggestions for their applicability. Pedometers are covered in-depth as they may be the method of choice in many youth settings. These devices are unobtrusive, have a relatively low cost, and provide excellent data quality. Proper physical activity measurement in youth settings can provide information about effective intervention strategies and may also encourage on-site participants to increase their physical activity frequency

Social Referencing Gaze Behavior During a Videogame Task: Eye Tracking Evidence from Children With and Without ASD

The purpose of this study was to understand the social referencing behaviors of children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) while visually attending to a videogame stimulus depicting both the face of the videogame player and the videogame play action. Videogames appear to offer a uniquely well-suited environment for the emergence of friendships, but it is not known if children with and without ASD attend to and play videogames similarly. Eyetracking technology was used to investigate visual attention of participants matched based on chronological age. Parametric and nonparametric statistical analyses were used and results indicated the groups did not differ on percentage of time spent visually attending to any of the areas of interest, with one possible exception

Measuring physical activity in youth settings: Considerations for instrument selection

Increasing physical activity participation has become one of the primary strategies for prevention of early-onset health conditions including obesity and Type II diabetes. Youth programs including summer camps and after-school programs are premium providers of physical activity opportunities, but researchers and administrators of these programs must be able to effectively collect and interpret physical activity data to make program adjustments and communicate results. This article reviews existing methods for physical activity measurement including self-reports and objective instruments and makes suggestions for their applicability. Pedometers are covered in-depth as they may be the method of choice in many youth settings. These devices are unobtrusive, have a relatively low cost, and provide excellent data quality. Proper physical activity measurement in youth settings can provide information about effective intervention strategies and may also encourage on-site participants to increase their physical activity frequency

Constructing a Trade Show Exhibitor Satisfaction Scale from a Stakeholder Perspective

The purpose of this study was to construct and validate an Exhibitor Satisfaction Scale that accounts for the significant roles of three key stakeholders (i.e., trade show visitors, exhibitors, and organizers) in a trade show context through a pilot test, scale purification and validation. The final instrument consisted of 46-items representing 3 dimensions and 12 sub-dimensions of exhibitors’ satisfaction. Reliability, unidimensionality, content validity, construct validity, discriminant validity, and predictive validity of the scale were tested and established using 930 responses from 4 trade shows in China. The resulting instrument was found to be superior to existing instruments in that it comprehensively measures exhibitors’ performance at a trade show and explains a large portion of exhibitors’ overall satisfaction. A major contribution of this study is that it introduces stakeholder theory as a guiding framework for measuring satisfaction in the trade show industry

Behavioral and psychological involvement of online video gamers: Building blocks or building walls to socialization?

Video gaming has often been associated with negative outcomes such as aggression and social isolation, particularly for those who spend significant amounts of time playing. However, advances in video game technology have enabled online, multi-player experiences which may facilitate social relationships. Recent literature suggests that meanings ascribed to video gaming may be more important in determining social outcomes than gaming behaviors alone. This study examined the relationship of both behavioral and psychological involvement in video gaming to perceived friend-based social support among a sample of multi-player, first-person shooter gamers. Results indicated that behavioral involvement (e.g., time spent playing, dollars spent) was unrelated to perceived social support. Enduring (i.e., psychological) involvement with video games had varied relationships with the measure of social support. Gamers who perceived video gaming to be a forum for social bonding were more likely to perceive higher levels of social support, while gamers who appeared to centralize their lifestyle around gaming were less likely to report positive social support levels

Changes in tourists’ perception of well-being based on their use of emotion regulation strategies during vacation

Based on the theoretical foundation of emotion regulation, this exploratory study aimed to examine changes in tourists’ perceived well-being and to determine whether these changes were due to use of emotion regulation strategies (ERSs) during their vacation. This study used travel diaries to record tourists’ use of ERSs on a daily basis, and also measured tourists’ perceived well-being one day before and after their vacation. Results indicated that tourists had significantly higher perceptions of well-being after vacation, and those who used ERSs were more likely to indicate a higher sense of well-being after vacation. The results provide new insight into which aspects of tourists’ subjective and psychological well-being can be boosted by taking vacations and how these aspects may be enhanced by using different ERSs

Assessing the relationship between community engagement and perceived ownership of an urban park in Philadelphia

Urban parks provide many benefits, though evidence of environmental injustice associated with certain park investments is growing. Some cities fail to engage communities in park planning, which can reduce residents’ sense of ownership of new and renovated parks and disconnect them from the neighborhood social fabric. Thus, this study assessed the outcomes of resident engagement with an urban park nonprofit located in a low-income community of color in Philadelphia. We developed new metrics measuring perceived engagement with park planning and programming and its association with perceived community ownership and perceptions of the park as part of the neighborhood social fabric. We analyzed these variables following a renovation using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Results showed significant relationships between perceived community engagement and perceptions of the park as a community asset. These findings underscore the importance of engaging communities in park planning to enhance ownership and avoid feeling excluded

Understanding the Sources of Online Travel Information

Given that online travel media enable multilateral communication patterns in destination marketing, this study investigates technical attributes presenting the number and type of source-related visual cues. From a technological perspective, the sources of online travel information can be conceptualized in terms of specialization, endorsement, and other users’ star rating to reflect technological functions and psychological effects. An experiment with a 2 (specialization: a generalist website vs. a specialist website) × 2 (endorsement: absence vs. presence) × 3 (star rating: low vs. medium vs. high) factorial between-subjects design was conducted to test the relationships between source-related visual cues, cue-induced perceptions, information credibility, and destination images. This study found that each source-related visual cue produced distinctive psychological effects on a tourist’s perceptions. Furthermore, these cue-induced perceptions were influential to tourists’ judgment of information credibility, which was positively related to destination images and behavioral intention

Repositioning undergraduate education in recreation and leisure studies

This article applies the repositioning framework developed for recreation and leisure service providers (Crompton, 2000, 2009) to recreation and leisure studies as an academic field. To ensure the viability of recreation and leisure studies, internal stakeholders must raise the standing of the field among several key external stakeholder groups: prospective undergraduate students and their parents, university administration, professionals, and the general public. The repositioning framework functions by identifying socially and politically relevant issues, working to address those issues through the medium of recreation and leisure studies, and effectively communicating these potential contributions to a variety of audiences. This article outlines real, associative, and psychological repositioning strategies that academic departments may implement individually, and as a collective whole, to raise the standing of recreation and leisure studies as a field of study