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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between attitudes toward physical education and leisure-time exercise by gender and nationality in high school students. The subjects were 451 high school students from the United States and Taiwan. The Physical Education Activity Attitude Scale (Mowatt, Depauw, & Hulac, 1988; Park, 1995; Valdez, 1997) and Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire (Godin & Sheppard, 1985; Sallis, Buono, Roby, Micale, & Nelson, 1993) were used to measure the students' attitudes toward physical education and leisure-time exercise. Pearson Product Moment correlation, two-way ANOVA, and MANOVA were used to analyze data. Significant relationships between attitudes toward physical education and leisure-time exercise, regardless of gender or nationality were found. Significant differences were also found in attitudes toward physical education by gender and nationality. The male students had more positive attitudes toward physical education than the females. Taiwanese students had more positive attitudes toward physical education than the students from the U. S. Significant differences were found in leisure-time exercise scores by gender and nationality. The boys had higher leisure-time exercise scores than the girls. The U.S. students had higher leisuretime exercise scores than the Taiwanese students.
Introduction
How important is physical activity or physical education for people's lives? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [U.S. DHHS] (1996) and Sallis and Owen (1999) reported that physically active people live longer and have lower premature death rates than people who are physically inactive and inactivity is one of the primary reasons for losing body functions. Regular physical activity can improve health-related fitness components (e.g. lower blood pressures, lower body fat, higher levels of HDL-cholesterol) in children, especially for children with obesity, diabetes or heart disease (Sallis & Owen, 1999). For teenagers. regular physical activity has been linked to improved strength, decreases in body fat, and building bone density (Bailey & Martin, 1994; Sallis, Buono, Roby, Micale, & Nelson, 1993; U.S. DHHS, 1996).
Physical education programs have been recognized as ideal environments for the promotion of health-related physical activity because of the high percentage of students enrolled (Chase, June 07,2000; Iverson, Fielding, Crow, & Christenson, 1985; Sallis, 1987; Sallis & McKenzie, 1990; McKenzie & Sallis, 1996). However, the Surgeon General's Report revealed that students' daily attendance in physical...