Perspectives on physical education by parents or guardians of primary and secondary students in Chihuahua, Mexico

Currently, physical education is classified as a key part of the academic curriculum for the development of active and healthy lifestyles. Objective: to know the prospects, con seleccion de la muestra a conveniencia. of parents or guardians of primary and secondary students about physical education. Methods: cross-sectional, descriptive and comparative study, for which a survey with 16 statements and a Likert-type scale response was designed, which was validated with 6 teachers. To establish internal consistency and reliability, Cronbach's Alpha, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett's sphericity tests were performed. The sample was selected at convenience. Parents / guardians (n = 302), 81.5% women and 18.5% men, were surveyed from 3 public primary schools (n = 175) and one secondary school (n = 127) from the city of Chihuahua, Mexico. To process the collected information, the IBM (R) SPSS version 21 statistical program was used. Subsequently, descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis were performed to identify significant differences between the respondents, and frequency measures to establish the percentages of the responses of the respondents. Results: as a positive aspect, 71.9% of those surveyed fully agree that the subject of physical education is necessary for young students to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle throughout their lives. On the negative side, only 51.7% totally agree that a trained and certified professional is needed. Conclusions: the surveyed parents consider that physical education is an important subject for children and adolescents to be active and healthy, however, only slightly less than 50% of parents perceive that this subject should be supervised by competent and certified professionals.