Browsing by Author "Martin, Jesse"

Aims. The aim of this study was to investigate the development of, and links between school burnout and physical activity in upper comprehensive school. According to previous studies, school burnout increases as pupils make a transition from one level of education to the next, and school burnout is more common among girls than boys. Previous studies have indicated that physical activity decreases as people grow older. As physical activity is known to promote health and wellbeing, it could be expected to be negatively connected with school burnout. This study involves examining the development of school burnout and physical activity at two different points of measurement occurring in grades 7 and 9. Differences in school burnout between groups of pupils in grade 7 divided based on physical activity were also examined. Finally, the study explored the differences in the development of school burnout between groups divided based on change in physical activity. Methods. The data were collected as part of the Mind the Gap research project in the period 2014–2016. The final data subject to analysis included 518 pupils from the capital region. The pupils had filled out questionnaires on grades 7 and 9. The data included 336 girls and 192 boys. The SBI indicator, developed for measuring school burnout, was used in examining school burnout. The questionnaire measuring physical activity originates from the School Health Promotion Study (THL 1996–, conducted once every two years). The physical activity of the respondents was investigated in this study by asking “how often do you engage in at least half an hour of physical activity during your leisure time?”. Research data were collected from pupils in grade 7 in the spring of 2014 and subsequently from the same pupils in grade 9 in the spring of 2016. The development of school burnout and physical activity was examined with the repeated measures analysis of variance. The differences in school burnout between groups were investigated using one-way analysis of variance, and the repeated measures analysis of variance was used to examine differences between groups in the development of school burnout over time. Results indicated that there was a statistically significant increase in school burnout among girls during upper comprehensive school. No similar development was observed in boys. There was no statistically significant development in physical activity during upper comprehensive school. There was no difference related to school burnout between groups divided based on physical activity in grade 7 or grade 9. The groups divided based on a change in physical activity differed in terms of school burnout in grade 7. The pupils with a considerable increase in physical activity during upper comprehensive school were most exhausted in grade 7 and statistically significantly differed from those with a minor decline, no change, or a minor change, in physical activity. The groups divided based on their chance in physical activity did not differ from one another in terms of the development of school burnout (p = .057). Based on this study, it can be noted that school burnout appears to increase during upper comprehensive school, particularly among girls. More research is needed to determine what kind of a connection can be found between physical activity and school burnout.