Middle school students' views about physical education: A comparative study between four European countries

Comparable and cross-national research is needed to examine students' views on the role of physical education (PE) in promoting active and healthy lifestyles, particularly in non-English speaking contexts. Thus, the present study aims to investigate and compare the views of middle school students from four European countries towards PE, considering cross-national and gender variables. In this cross-sectional study, 1244 middle school students (635 boys, 609 girls; Mean age = 14.3 +/- 0.9 years) from a public secondary school in Croatia, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal, answered to a questionnaire about their: (a) PE attitude, (b) PE importance, (c) PE main aim, and (d) perception of competence in PE. ANOVA and Student t-test were used to compare students' views across countries, and to compare boys' and girls' views within each country. Overall, results show that the students' views towards PE were mainly positive but important differences were found across the students from the four European countries. In all countries, boys have a more positive attitude, gave more importance to PE and perceived themselves as more competent than girls. Regardless of the sociocultural context, this study suggests that there is a cross-national need to further explore the nature of the differences found and increase young girl's attitudes towards PE. Additionally, more comparative studies are needed with a broad range of sociocultural contexts to assess the extent to which this type of differences is present.