Physical Activity and Enjoyment

Childhood engagement in physical activity improves health and contributes to the sustainment of physical activity in adulthood. My dissertation research broadens scholarship by disentangling the effects of sports- vs. non-sports-focused summer camps on children’s physical activity and identifying modifiable activity characteristics contributing to physical activity enjoyment, an important predictor of physical activity sustainment. My work also challenges current discourse by presenting the analytical argument for bringing enjoyment research to the forefront of public health. In Chapter 1, I hypothesize that children attending a sports camp spend more time in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to children attending general day camps. Multivariable linear regression models estimated differences in percent of accelerometer-monitored time spent in MVPA. Children in the sports camp spent significantly more time in MVPA compared to children in a non-sports-oriented camp. This is the first study of its kind to use real data to document physical activity differences between sports and non-sports camps. In Chapter 2, I investigate whether children in a sports camp exper