PURPOSE This study conducted a longitudinal analysis of physical activity levels and characteristics of middle-school boys and girls over a three-year period before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS This study used a sequential mixed-methods research design. In the quantitative study; three-dimensional accelerometers were used to measure weekly physical activity and sedentary time over three years (2019, 2020, and 2021) among 33 middle-school boys and girls, and the data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance. In the qualitative study, data were collected and analyzed through focus group interviews with five participants. RESULTS The quantitative study indicated a significant increase in sedentary behavior and significant decrease in low-intensity activity and MVPA during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the second year of the pandemic, no significant difference was observed in sedentary behavior, low-intensity activity, and MVPA compared to the data collected in the first year. During the pandemic’s first year, qualitative study identified the following physical activity problems: “lockdowns,” “sedentarization of leisure,” and “reduced structured physical activity.” The following reasons were identified for the lack of improvement in physical activity during the second year: “intensified sedentary lifestyle habits,” “weak social networks,” and “lack of energy to exercise.” CONCLUSIONS The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant decrease in physical activity and a significant increase in sedentary behavior among middle-school students in South Korea, and even as the environments for physical activity have recovered, the physical activity problems of the early stages of the pandemic have not improved.
This study aimed to explore the types of traumatic event experienced by Volleyball players and then prepare to take-off the serial process of posttraumatic growth to schematize a causal network by organizing the factors for overcoming adversity. Participants experiences were collected by distributing open-ended questionnaires to 77 professional Women's volleyball players in 2013-2014 and collected data was categorized by inductive content analysis. These results were schematized by the causal network. As a result of the study, according to the trauma were categorized into four general areas: member conflict, competence loss, physical injury, and coach conflict and the emotions relative to the trauma were categorized into four general areas: powerlessness, pressure, dejection, and hostility also coping factors were categorized into three general areas: social support, intervention strategies, and psychological control. Finally, positive growth emerged as psychological leap, performance improvement, psychological maturity, and emotional stability. And as a result of the categorized study, bring about a better understanding to the posttraumatic growth by causal network. Based on the study results, that volleyball players experienced a positive development on themself after overcoming the problem that they had suffered psychological scars from a traumatic event. In doing so, they contributed to the formation of resources that helped them in their positive lives. In this regard, this study expects to provide the players who have been scratched in mind because of the traumatic experience.
