The effect of COVID-19 pandemic process on the physical fitness level capacities and nutrition self-efficacy attitudes of 14-18 year old students at the secondary school level

This research aims to determine and reveal the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic process on the physical fitness level capacities and nutrition self-efficacy attitudes of 14-18 year old students taking physical education and sports courses at the secondary school level. The research was designed with a single-group pre-posttest design without a control group, which is one of the preliminary experimental research designs. The study group of the research, in line with the principle of volunteering, consists of a total of 912 secondary school students, 555 female students and 357 male students in the 14-18 age group, who are educated at Muratpaşa Türk Telekom Anatolian High School affiliated with Antalya Provincial Directorate of National Education and who do not have any obstacles in participating in Physical Education and Sports classes and have no attendance problems. The faculty consists of young people. As data collection tools in the research, anthropometric measurements of height and body weight, which are body composition characteristics, and standing long jump, sit-up, push-up, sit-reach-reach and flamingo balance tests, which are physical fitness capacity performance tests, were used to determine physical fitness capacity levels. To determine nutrition self-efficacy attitude levels, the Nutrition subscale of the Child Heart Health Promotion Attitude Scale scale was used. The collected data was first applied to the Shapiro-Wilk test to determine whether the data was suitable for normal distribution, and as a result of the test, it was determined that p>0.05 for all parameters. Paired group T test was used to compare intra-group differences among parametric tests for the gender variable of physical fitness level capacities and nutrition self-efficacy attitudes, and independent sample T test was used to compare differences in intergroup scores. One-way analysis of variance was applied to determine the differences in intra-group and inter-group scores from parametric tests for the grade level variable of physical fitness level capacities and nutrition self-efficacy attitudes. Frequency percentage distributions for gender, grade, height and body weight variables of all participants were analyzed. In the research, the confidence interval was determined as 95% and the significance level was determined as p<0.05, and all calculations and analyzes were carried out. As a result, at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic process, while there were significant differences in the physical fitness level capacities of 14-18 year old students taking physical education and sports courses at the secondary school level according to gender and grade level variables, no significance was found in their nutrition self-efficacy attitudes.