The report on the 2018 activity

The report on the 2018 activity – carried out within the framework of the EFOP-5.2.2-17-2017-00035 project – was prepared on the basis of an interview with Dr. Andor Molnár, professional manager:

The project’s title is Complex, comparative analysis of the interactions between regular health promotion physical activity, quality of life, motor abilities and body composition among students living in the Carpathian Basin within the framework of a Hungarian-Romanian-Slovak cooperation project. As the title of the project indicates, an international co-operation between three countries is realized in this project.

First of all, it is important to mention that, unlike Hungary, there is no everyday physical education in Slovakia and Romania. Students have much less chance of regular exercise. Our main goal is therefore to study the effects of regular, everyday physical activity. Our goal is to make comparisons between Hungarian, Slovakian and Romanian 6-year-olds, i.e. school children (first class pupils), in 3 consecutive semesters. Certainly, the whole project is carried out with the consent of the parents and by preserving the anonymity of the children. We measure their body composition, study the development of their movement skills and map their quality of life. From this huge data set we will not only be able to conclude whether more and regular exercise has a good effect on the examined indicators of children, but we can also illuminate the correlations between obesity, motor development and quality of life.

The Foundation for the Sustainable Development of our Society has invited professional experts in the field of sport to implement the program at home. After the contact with the Slovak and Romanian partner institutions, we signed the letters of intent and then the cooperation agreements for the professional implementation of the program. Based on these, the international partners involved in the implementation of the project are the research groups of the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport at the Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad and the Department of Kinesiotherapy and Theoretical Disciplines at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and the research groups of the Department of Physical Education and Sport at the Constantine Philosopher University of Nitra and the Department of Physical Education of J. Selye University of Komarno, Slovakia.

At the start of the program, we held an international dissemination workshop and conference, where foreign partners were informed in detail about the tasks undertaken in the project, the research plan, the project's time and work schedule, and discussed possible ways of statistical analysis of the data to be recorded during the research and the publication of the results.

As part of the preparation of the measurements, we purchased the measuring instruments required for the tests, the OMRON HBF-511 body composition monitors and Lenovo Netbooks in accordance with the project's objective. Authorization of the use of the questionnaire (KidScreen-27) to be used has been completed by the KidScreen Group. We have finalized – along with the foreign partners – the additional questions to the KidScreen-27 questionnaire, translating them into Slovak and Romanian, and editing them to the questionnaire. These additional questions are about the sport habits of the pupils besides the PE lessons and their parents’ sport habits. KidScreen-27's validated version in Hungarian and Romanian has been received from KidScreen Group and the KidScreen-27 questionnaire has been officially translated into Slovak. This translation has been verified; and the Slovak parent and child version of the questionnaire has also been edited. We acquired the English language professional description of the Test of Gross Motor Development (TGMD) to be used for the measurement of motor skills, and delivered it to our partners. The required parts (description of motor tests, scoring system) were translated into Hungarian. We edited Hungarian and English, paper-based and digital data sheets for each test area (body composition measurement, motor skills measurement, quality of life mapping), and delivered them to our partners also.

Before the first phase of the measurements, the transfer of the test tools took place in the course of personal meetings and field trips to the four foreign partners. On these partner visits, we tailored the research plan to the specifics of the particular research site. During the visit at the Romanian partner institution in Arad the field trip of the university student group (junior researchers, participants) of the University of Szeged was also held. In addition to the co-ordination consultation, we conducted a visit to the theoretical and practical training facilities and sports science laboratory of the Aurel Vlaicu University's Faculty of Physical Education and Sports, led by the representatives of the Arad partner. We got an insight into the researches and trainings at the partner institution in Arad, and got to know their infrastructure. In addition, sports major students (junior researchers, participants) of the University of Szeged participated in university sports competitions, where they measured their knowledge with the students of the host institution in dragon boat paddling, beach volleyball and futsal.

Besides the field trips to the foreign partners and the personal meetings, the contact between the partners was continuous via e-mails and Skype-discussions. In parallel with this, we launched the project’s homepage and its development and actualisation is continuous.   

Before the first period of the measurements as well, we organized professional workshops and reviewed the research plan with the local executors of the project. We trained them and practised the use of the project’s measurement tools and the technique of data recording.

After this, we made the measurement tools ready along with the foreign partners on every side. We acquired the necessary allowances from the school managements and parents, organized the measurements among the first class pupils in the selected local primary schools, and in the autumn of 2018, we accomplished the first phase of our longitudinal study. We investigated about 200 pupils in every country. Consequently, we recorded approximately 600 children’s data in total. The digitization of the data has been finished as well. We collected these huge, considerable data sets from the partners and currently the project’s statistician is analysing them.

As the closing of the first measurement period, we organized an international dissemination workshop and conference in December 2018. The purpose of this meeting was to evaluate our foregoing activity and the data we recorded during the first period of measurements, to summarize our experiences, to debate the emerging problems, to prepare the second phase of measurements planned for the spring of 2019, and to agree the further tasks of the project.

Szeged, Hungary