Interestingly enough I was able to find an article on a study conducted in Mexico City through the school systems. The Study tried to asses the activity levels of the children in order to determine whether they were sufficient for healthy development. This population is a kind of hybrid between the kids that I will study in Mexico and the kids in the United States- to which I will compare the results of my study. Mexico city is a more urban and well-developed area of Mexico and as such is more similar to the United States than to the rural towns surrounding Irapuato, Mexico. As well, the children that live in Mexico City will share a lot of the culture and similar activities that the kids in Irapuato engage in. As such it is interesting to find a study in which one might expect this sort of "middle ground." With that said, within the article is was stated that 26% of Mexican children are considered overweight. --- I briefly looked for the same statistic for American kids, but I didn't have a lot of time to really find what I needed.
In addition, this study used a technique called SOFIT, "System for observing fitness instruction time." This is apparently a common tool used to quantify the quality of Physical Education classes. So of course I looked up the SOFIT methods in order to understand a little more about what the scientific community requires or at least recommends in order to conduct valid and acceptable observations of physical activity. One of the main points of SOFIT, however, is to evaluate the instruction given to the students concerning physical activity.
Considering my project and the population that I am going to be studying, I don't even know if they will have a "PE" class like the ones that are used in Mexico City. In addition I am not worried about what is taught in the schools, but more- what kinds of activities the students engage in which increase of decrease their core stability. With that said, within the procedures for the SOFIT technique were several ideas and variables that I sould take care of or at least take into account before going their. For instance, they observe students for 10s intervals and describe their activity during that time- whether they are laying down, sitting, standing, walking or more acitive. I think that this could be an effective way for me to collect the data that I need.
I also, feel that this won't quite be efficient enough for the goals of the my project. However, I can certainly adopt some of the techniques. My study will require more than just obeservation of schools activity level, but levels that ocurr at any and all times. in addition, I am by no means evaluating the effective of the PE instruction in the classroom.
Another question that I need to take into consideration is how much I can vary the thechniques that I use in this project with those that amy used in the project before. I want to be able to use all of the data that she collected, but if I collect mine in a different way from hers, it could render the projects incompatible. With that said, I may not even want to use the SOFIT method. We'll see.
As I was reading your post today, I was thinking about the fairly recent news on child obesity in Mexico. I'm not sure if you know, but over the past year there has been a big fuss in Mexico over child obesity, and what goes on in schools has been targeted most. Specifically, people have complained about the snacks and food provided at the schools as well as physical education. I was just thinking, that might be something you want to look into to get a general picture of some things going on in Mexico overall.
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