A Study of the Effects of a Structured Daily Physical Activity Intervention in Schools in Malta
, Renzo Kerr-Cumbo *, Matthew Muscat-Inglott, Melanie Darmanin and Heathcliff SchembriRound 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIntroduction
- Page 1 line 3, “worldwide” is misleading since the three citations are only from United States and Canada. I suggest either adding more citations to represent the world (which I think it’s quite difficult and somewhat impossible) or finding a better word choice.
- Second paragraph summarizes previous research nice and neat.
- Third paragraph where it says “. . . daily PA sessions in three treatment classes across three state schools, . . . “ needs to be re-worded for clarification. When I first read it, I thought there are three different treatments. As I keep reading, I realize there is only one treatment/experiment group comparted to one control group at each school. Therefore, there are three treatment classes across three state schools. I suggest rephrasing this part of the sentence more clearly on the first go.
Materials and methods
- Insert a new second-level heading for “2.1 Setting” and describe the “treatment” and “control” classes. Specifically, elaborate on the daily PA sessions. For instance, where did the 40-45 minutes of PA sessions take place (e.g., gym, outside)? When did it occur (e.g., before school, after school, lunch time)? Was the time accumulative or all in one bout? Who was leading/instructing/overseeing the daily PA sessions? It’d be great if you can also provide the content/topics covered during the intervention. Most importantly, how long was the intervention (e.g., how many weeks, months)? When you are done with describing the daily PA sessions, you will also describe what the students in the control class did. Describe what their days looked like with and without PE. I assume they didn’t have PE every day, but they should have PE on a regular basis like twice or three times a week – such information is needed and will give the audience a better idea on the comparison of the two classes.
- Insert another second-level heading for “2.2. Participants” and refer the readers to Table 3 (this table will become table 1). Further, 45 of the 87 were selected to wear the pedometers. How many of the 45 were in the experiment group and how many were in the control group? Adding number of individuals with and without pedometers on table 3 would be a great visual aid for readers.
- The original “2.1 Data collection” becomes “2.3 Data Collection. (1) Report the intra-unit validity number. (2) Define “extraordinary activities”; I thought the PA intervention was meant to be the activities that spike up their PA level. If this is the case, what are extraordinary activities? (3) What was the time they put on and took off the pedometers? The time frame that they wore the pedometers would vary; in order words, the longer a student wore the pedometer the more steps s/he got, generally speaking. Therefore, instead of “first thing in the morning” and “taken off only at night”, I suggest to give a more precise time. (4) Explain how the BMI was measured? Height, weight formular? Bod pod measurement? Waist-hip ratio? etc. (5) Is there a form the researchers provided for the participants to self-report PA after school? How and what would the participants know what to report? Since you were only asking them to record “frequency” of extra sport/PA sessions, would playing 10 min outside the same as one hour practice on the soccer field? Table 2 illustrates “no” and “yes” for the additional sports; why? I thought you were asking them to report frequency. Need more information on this data source. The last paragraph on page 3 should go under “data analysis.”
- The original “2.2 Data analysis” becomes “2.4 Data Analysis.” (1) The decision to eliminate all incomplete cases is problematic and unnecessary. It is problematic because it reduced your sample size from 87 to 18, which made your analysis fairly weak. It is unnecessary because you used average steps anyway. I suggest adding the “missing data” back to your dataset and re-computing the analyses again and see what you found.
- The first two paragraphs on page 4 should go under “results.”
- Data analysis: (1) Report the statistical analysis you ran for the pedometer data, BMI, and afterschool PA data. (2) Hypothesis should go right after the purpose statement and before the methods section. (3) The two paragraphs on page 5 should go under “results.”
- There needs to be write-ups under the “results” section, to accompany the tables. Simply illustrating the tables would not be sufficient for an academic paper like this. The way the authors structured the manuscript, you are probably better off to combined the results and discussion into one section as “3. Results and Discussion” and break it down like you did under the original “4. Discussion” section.
- The authors may need to edit the context from page 7 to page 14 after including all 87 participants back to the dataset and run the stats again.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageNo issue with quality of English
Author Response
To whom it may concern,
We would like to thank you for the opportunity to review our paper and strengthen its position. Additional to the feedback received we have gone to an additional proof reading and editing process to assure streamlining of the submitted paper.
Below you may find our report, indicating our changes in relation to the suggested actions by reviewer.
|
Reviewer’s Notes |
Actions |
|
INTRODUCTION |
|
|
|
|
|
Page 1 line 3, “worldwide” is misleading since the three citations are only from United States and Canada. I suggest either adding more citations to represent the world (which I think it’s quite difficult and somewhat impossible) or finding a better word choice. |
Just removed “worldwide” |
|
Second paragraph summarizes previous research nice and neat. |
Thanks |
|
Third paragraph where it says “. . . daily PA sessions in three treatment classes across three state schools, . . . “ needs to be re-worded for clarification. When I first read it, I thought there are three different treatments. As I keep reading, I realize there is only one treatment/experiment group comparted to one control group at each school. Therefore, there are three treatment classes across three state schools. I suggest rephrasing this part of the sentence more clearly on the first go. |
The sentence was changed to “…daily PA sessions in three different grade four classrooms (children aged eight to nine years), in each of the three participating Maltese state primary schools”. |
|
MATERIALS & METHODS |
|
|
Insert a new second-level heading for “2.1 Setting” and describe the “treatment” and “control” classes. Specifically, elaborate on the daily PA sessions. For instance, where did the 40-45 minutes of PA sessions take place (e.g., gym, outside)? When did it occur (e.g., before school, after school, lunch time)? Was the time accumulative or all in one bout? Who was leading/instructing/overseeing the daily PA sessions? It’d be great if you can also provide the content/topics covered during the intervention. Most importantly, how long was the intervention (e.g., how many weeks, months)? When you are done with describing the daily PA sessions, you will also describe what the students in the control class did. Describe what their days looked like with and without PE. I assume they didn’t have PE every day, but they should have PE on a regular basis like twice or three times a week – such information is needed and will give the audience a better idea on the comparison of the two classes. |
Done in 2.1 Setting. |
|
Insert another second-level heading for “2.2. Participants” and refer the readers to Table 3 (this table will become table 1). Further, 45 of the 87 were selected to wear the pedometers. How many of the 45 were in the experiment group and how many were in the control group? Adding number of individuals with and without pedometers on table 3 would be a great visual aid for readers. |
Done as section.2.2. Table was also moved to this section and Total Control and Treatment number of Pedometers entered in the table for further clarity.
|
|
The original “2.1 Data collection” becomes “2.3 Data Collection. (1) Report the intra-unit validity number. (2) Define “extraordinary activities”; I thought the PA intervention was meant to be the activities that spike up their PA level. If this is the case, what are extraordinary activities? (3) What was the time they put on and took off the pedometers? The time frame that they wore the pedometers would vary; in order words, the longer a student wore the pedometer the more steps s/he got, generally speaking. Therefore, instead of “first thing in the morning” and “taken off only at night”, I suggest to give a more precise time. (4) Explain how the BMI was measured? Height, weight formular? Bod pod measurement? Waist-hip ratio? etc. (5) Is there a form the researchers provided for the participants to self-report PA after school? How and what would the participants know what to report? Since you were only asking them to record “frequency” of extra sport/PA sessions, would playing 10 min outside the same as one hour practice on the soccer field? Table 2 illustrates “no” and “yes” for the additional sports; why? I thought you were asking them to report frequency. Need more information on this data source. (6) The last paragraph on page 3 should go under “data analysis.” |
2.3 Data Collection – done. (2) added (ex. Sports days, outings, etc.). We hope this clarifies. (3) They were not given a precise time, because they all have a different lifestyle, and if a student wakes up at 5am and makes an additional 1000 steps before school time, is relevant for our ‘realistic’ understanding. If we limit them with the same time frame, data is skewed. (4) To clarify BMI, we added “(specifically weight and height measurements)” where BMI was mentioned in the methodology section. (5) “Finally, the participants were asked to self-report frequency in sessions per week of any additional sports of formal/structured PA performed throughout the week performed after school hours.
Figure 3 and Figure 4 demonstrate daily steps outside school and average steps outside school. Table 5 was added to provide further details.
(6) Done |
|
The original “2.2 Data analysis” becomes “2.4 Data Analysis.” (1) The decision to eliminate all incomplete cases is problematic and unnecessary. It is problematic because it reduced your sample size from 87 to 18, which made your analysis fairly weak. It is unnecessary because you used average steps anyway. I suggest adding the “missing data” back to your dataset and re-computing the analyses again and see what you found. |
The sample size was 45 for this study. As explained above, 87 were the number of participants in the national study (in fact we removed this number and left it to 45 in this paper to reduce confusion). |
|
Data analysis: (1) Report the statistical analysis you ran for the pedometer data, BMI, and afterschool PA data. (2) Hypothesis should go right after the purpose statement and before the methods section. (3) The two paragraphs on page 5 should go under “results.” |
(1) Matt what can we do here???? (2) Done (3) sorted as per the below. |
|
RESULTS |
|
|
The first two paragraphs on page 4 should go under “results.” |
Moved to the beginning of the results section, which is now renamed as results and discussion. |
|
There needs to be write-ups under the “results” section, to accompany the tables. Simply illustrating the tables would not be sufficient for an academic paper like this. The way the authors structured the manuscript, you are probably better off to combined the results and discussion into one section as “3. Results and Discussion” and break it down like you did under the original “4. Discussion” section. |
Results and discussions were merged in a more cohesive manner and tables and figures represented in text. |
|
The authors may need to edit the context from page 7 to page 14 after including all 87 participants back to the dataset and run the stats again. |
“All N = 87 students across treatment and control classes in all three schools were treated as the population in the context of the present study”.
This sentence was removed as it confuses readers. There were 87 students participating in the FULL RESEARCH PROJECT, but IN REALITY, looking at the pedometry study on its own, only 45 participated in the study, as only 45 pedometers were available.
These were distributed between control and treatment group students in a random manner. |
While we hope that the above tackle the review as necessarily expected, we are always open for feedback as necessary for publication.
Kindest regards,
Authors.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for giving me the opportunity to review the manuscript. Before this study can be published, I would like to share some observations that I believe can significantly enrich your work. Below are my suggestions for possible review changes.
Given the state of the art, the work presented is important for the context under study. Although it is not considered new, in the context in which it is developed it can provide relevant information to understand the reality of PE in primary schools. In this sense, the scope of the article is in line with the objectives of the magazine.
In general, the manuscript follows a structure suitable for a manuscript of this nature. However, I consider, and given the importance that is intended to be given to the study, that in terms of references, these can be strengthened with more up-to-date and recent studies. Of the 16 references, only 4 were published in the last 5 years. In this sense, authors are suggested to incorporate more recent studies throughout the article. I also suggest the need to review the citation and bibliographic referencing standards in force in the journal.
Regarding the replicability of the study, some weaknesses can be observed, namely in terms of defining the objective. This should be more precise and concrete and effectively lead the reader to have a concrete idea of what he studied. Thus, in the methodology section, we found some weaknesses that may raise some doubts and difficulties in replicating this study. In this sense, we suggest the need to organize this field, possibly following the following structure: Participants; Instruments; Procedures; and data analysis. Likewise, in each of these fields, authors must be rigorous in their detailed description, always aiming for the possibility of replicating the study.
In a more particular analysis, I consider that the title of the article could be a little more appealing. I consider it extensive.
While the summary is informative, it could benefit from more concise language to facilitate quick comprehension. Still at this point, the summary briefly mentions the study's conclusions, but can provide a little more detail about the main results and how they lead to the conclusions. Additionally, you could include a sentence or two about the practical implications of these findings.
At the introduction level, consider reviewing more existing literature to analyze and identify current challenges and gaps in this field of study.
When discussing the results, only the authors' interpretation is observed. The “confrontation” with other studies is only done with two authors. Therefore, this part of the manuscript lacks the depth and analytical rigor expected in a study of this nature. In fact, this point should be strengthened with the contribution of more recent evidence with which the results obtained can be “discussed”. Only then will we be able to have a more concrete and real vision in light of the most recent evidence.
In terms of conclusions, it would also be valuable to contextualize the conclusions a little more clearly in the international context. This could include comparisons with similar studies in more countries than those cited.
The practical implications of their findings could also be made more explicit. Concrete recommendations for the development of programs in schools, recommendations for parents and guardians, as well as specific recommendations for policy makers or even educational institutions, for example, would increase the practical value of the research. In the same vein, a deeper exploration of limitations and suggestion of specific directions for future research would strengthen its contribution to the field.
In summary, while your article offers valuable insights, it would greatly benefit from greater depth and rigor in its analysis.
Author Response
To whom it may concern,
We would like to thank you for the opportunity to review our paper and strengthen its position. Additional to the feedback received we have gone to an additional proof reading and editing process to assure streamlining of the submitted paper.
Below you may find our report, indicating our changes in relation to the suggested actions by reviewer.
|
Reviewer 2 - Notes |
Actions |
|
TITLE |
|
|
In a more particular analysis, I consider that the title of the article could be a little more appealing. I consider it extensive. |
We were not sure of what kind of title is suggested here, so we did not change, but we are open for suggestions. |
|
ABSTRACT |
|
|
While the summary is informative, it could benefit from more concise language to facilitate quick comprehension. Still at this point, the summary briefly mentions the study's conclusions, but can provide a little more detail about the main results and how they lead to the conclusions. Additionally, you could include a sentence or two about the practical implications of these findings. |
Tackled |
|
INTRODUCTION |
|
|
At the introduction level, consider reviewing more existing literature to analyze and identify current challenges and gaps in this field of study. |
To be honest it was hard to identify more recent work that fits in our narrative in our introductory section. Yet our introduction includes Steene-Johannessen et.al., (2020), Varela Garrote (2022), Pfiedderer (2021). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MATERIALS & METHODS |
|
|
Regarding the replicability of the study, some weaknesses can be observed, namely in terms of defining the objective. This should be more precise and concrete and effectively lead the reader to have a concrete idea of what he studied.
Thus, in the methodology section, we found some weaknesses that may raise some doubts and difficulties in replicating this study. In this sense, we suggest the need to organize this field, possibly following the following structure: Participants; Instruments; Procedures; and data analysis. Likewise, in each of these fields, authors must be rigorous in their detailed description, always aiming for the possibility of replicating the study. |
This has been strengthened by following reviewers’ suggestions and moving hypothesis after ‘purpose’ and before ‘methodology’.
In looking for a balance between the two reviews, we have organised it as follows: 2.2 Participants 2.3 Data Collection (procedures) – Instruments – U-track 763 pedometers are listed. Self-report is also better explained. 2.4 Data Analysis |
|
RESULTS |
|
|
When discussing the results, only the authors' interpretation is observed. The “confrontation” with other studies is only done with two authors. Therefore, this part of the manuscript lacks the depth and analytical rigor expected in a study of this nature. In fact, this point should be strengthened with the contribution of more recent evidence with which the results obtained can be “discussed”. Only then will we be able to have a more concrete and real vision in light of the most recent evidence. |
Included:
Zanevskyy, I., & Bodnarchuk, O. A model of pedometer determined physical activity in primary school children. Teorìâ ta Metodika Fìzičnogo Vihovannâ, 2020. Volume 20(1), 18-24.
Dimech, S. & Muscat-Inglott, M. Exploring the relationship between socioeconomic status and sport participation in Maltese children: A cross-sectional short survey of mothers in relatively affluent households. Journal of Theory and Practice in Sport, 2023. Volume 2(1), 1-22.
|
|
CONCLUSION |
|
|
In terms of conclusions, it would also be valuable to contextualize the conclusions a little more clearly in the international context. This could include comparisons with similar studies in more countries than those cited. |
|
|
The practical implications of their findings could also be made more explicit. Concrete recommendations for the development of programs in schools, recommendations for parents and guardians, as well as specific recommendations for policy makers or even educational institutions, for example, would increase the practical value of the research. In the same vein, a deeper exploration of limitations and suggestion of specific directions for future research would strengthen its contribution to the field. |
The last 6 lines have been added, taking this in consideration. |
|
REFERENCES |
|
|
references, these can be strengthened with more up-to-date and recent studies. Of the 16 references, only 4 were published in the last 5 years. In this sense, authors are suggested to incorporate more recent studies throughout the article.
I also suggest the need to review the citation and bibliographic referencing standards in force in the journal. |
This should have been improved with all the other actions.
May you kindly suggest any necessary changes with regards to referencing standards? |
|
|
|
While we hope that the above tackle the review as necessarily expected, we are always open for feedback as necessary for publication.
Kindest regards,
Authors.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript now presented shows considerable improvements compared to its first version. In general, I agree with the changes made by the authors. However, I suggest the following title for the work: "Study of the effects of a structured daily physical activity intervention in schools in Malta".
Best regards.
Author Response
Title has been changed to "Study of the effects of a structured daily physical activity intervention in schools in Malta", as suggested.
