High School Students’ Situational Interest Predicting Physical Activity Levels in Exergaming

Purpose: It has been evident that students’ motivation is the key in increasing physical activity (PA) levels during exergame play (Staiano & Calvert, 2011). Recently, situational interest (including five dimensional sources) has been used to investigate students’ motivation when playing exergames (Huang & Gao, 2012). It was reported enjoyment and novelty predicted young children’s moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). However, no study is available to investigate the relations between situation interest and PA among high school students. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the predictive utility of high school students’ situational interest components and PA during exergame play. Methods: A total of 60 ten through twelve grade students (32 girls; M = 16.17 years, SD = 1.17) participated in one 30-minute session Reflex Ridge game of Xbox 360 Kinect Adventures. Students’ PA levels were measured by ActiGraph accelerometers with percentages of time spent in sedentary, light PA and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) as the outcome variables. They also responded to the validated Situational Interest Scale (including novelty, challenge, attention demand, exploration intention, and instant enjoyment) at the end of the session. Results: All components of situational interest were positively related to one another (p<0.05) except the relations between challenge and enjoyment (p=0.66). A stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed to determine how students’ situational interest dimensions predicted their physical activity levels. Results indicated that attention demand emerged as a significant predictor of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, ß = 0.41, p < 0.05 accounting for 16.7% of the variance for this intensity of physical activity while novelty was found to be a marginally significant predictor of students’ light physical activity, ß = 0.25, p < 0.06 accounting for 13.4% of the variance in this variable. Conclusions: The findings indicate complex relations among situational interest components. Interestingly, the novelty component of the exergame is not enough to engage high school students in levels of PA congruent with health benefits. It is recommended educators focus the attention demand feature of exergames to promote high school students’ PA.