Impact of Sports England Free Activity Sessions on Daily Step Counts

Research question:

Do Sports England free activity sessions increase overall average steps per day when wearing a pedometer (which is an indication of activity level)?

Null Hypothesis:

Sports England free activity sessions do not affect steps per day activity level amongst individuals.

Justification of test used

There is only one repeated measured variable, namely, average steps per day when wearing a pedometer at time intervals of at 3-,12- and 24-month. Also, there is one between a subject variable which is a group having two categories control and intervention (Sports England free activity sessions). So, mixed between subjects ANOVA will be applied with one repeated measure and one between-subject factor groups, which is commonly used in statistics dissertation help for analyzing complex data structures..

Description of Test:

The mixed one-way analysis of variance was used with steps per day as the dependent variable and time in 3, 12, 24 months as the repeated measure and group as the between-subject factor. All women were noted for steps per day at 3, 12 and 24 months and amongst them, 89 (Table 2) received Sports England free activity sessions and 185 who did not receive it was taken as the baseline control group. Further, the analysis in the appendix shows that assumption of normality, equality of variance, equality of covariance is satisfied.

As per mixed ANOVA (Table 6), F(2,544) = 0.068; p > 0.05; η2 < 0.001. Since the p-value or the significance value is more than the critical alpha value of 0.05, it can be said that there are no statistically significant interaction effects of time and intervention group on steps per day. The interaction plot of marginal means further confirms the above result.

Further, the result of interaction between time and steps per day shows F(2,544) = 1667.12; p < 0.05; η2 =0.86. This shows that there is a statistically significant interaction between time and steps per day as the p-value or the significance value comes out to be less than 0.05.

As per the between-subject results (Table 7), (F(1,272)=0.14,P>0.05, η2=0.001). This shows that there is no statistically significant effect of baseline and intervention Sports England free activity sessions group on steps per day. As only time has a significant impact on steps per days, so firstly we used simple contrasts (Table 8) and found that the steps per day after 24th month (M= 11022.36, SD=396.27) is significantly higher than steps per day after 3rd month (M=8985.91, SD=289.86), F(1,272)=3351.61, p<0.05. Also, the steps per day after 24th month (M= 11022.36, SD=396.27) is significantly higher than steps per day after 12th month (M=10015.62, SD=414.59), F(1,272)=828.43,p<0.05. To compare 3rd and 12th month, a paired t-test (Table 11) was applied, and it was found that the steps per day after 12th month (M=10015.62, SD=414.59) is significantly higher than steps per day after a 3rd month (M=8985.91, SD=289.86), t(273)=31.01,p<0.05.

Summary:

On the basis of the above results, the null hypothesis is accepted, and the alternative hypothesis is rejected. Thus, it can be said that there is no statistically significant difference in the steps per day between bassline and Sports England free activity sessions group at 3,12 and 24-month intervals. That is, Sports England free activity sessions do not affect steps per day activity level amongst individuals.

Appendix

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