High School Students’ Attitudes Toward Fitness Testing

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of high school students toward fitness testing. An instrument containing 18 items and four factors measuring student’s attitudes toward fitness testing: cognitive, affect-enjoyment, affect-feelings, and affect-teacher was completed by 524 boys and 675 girls (N = 1199). MANOVA indicated significant differences among the dependent variables for grade and gender. A stepwise discriminant function analysis (DFA) indicated affect-feelings then affect-enjoyment as variables that predicted these differences. Follow-up tests indicated that gender, and not grade, was the cause of the significant affect-feelings differences. MANOVA for fitness test types and the follow-up DFA indicated that students who completed the FitnessGram test had significantly higher cognitive attitudes than those who completed the President’s Challenge. The results suggest that student gender and the type of fitness test impact and lead to differences in attitudes.