Effects of DDR-Based Exercise on Children’s Self-Esteem and Physical Activity

Background/Purpose:  Exergaming refers to active video games that are also a form of exercise. Recently exergaming has been increasingly implemented at schools as an innovative and fun approach for promoting a physically active lifestyle (Gao et al., 2013a; 2013b). For example, Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) is used as an important bridge to capture children’s interest and promote a health-enhancing level of fitness (Gao, 2012). Researchers have investigated the benefits of exergaminig as a means for promoting physical activity (PA). However, many studies only focused on one dimension (e.g., effect of DDR/Wii on energy expenditure) that exergaming brings to children. Such studies have not explained the effects of exergaming on many other aspects of child development. This study was to examine the effects of a DDR-based exercise program on children’s self-esteem and PA levels.

Method:  Participants were 162 fouth through sixth grade children (96 boys; M_age=11.26) from an urban elementary school where no physical education class was offered. Participants responded to a validated questionnaire assessing their global self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1965), and their baseline 7-day PA levels were assessed by SPARK activity checklist in September 2010 (pretest). The fourth graders (n=53) were then placed to the intervention group engaging in 30 min. DDR-based exercise (e.g., DDR, and aerobic dance) three times per week, while the fifth (n=75) and sixth graders (n=34) were assigned to the comparison group without performing any structured exercise at the school. The identical measurements were taken again in May 2011 (post-test).

Analysis/Results: ANOVA with repeated measures for self-esteem revealed no significant difference on self-esteem between the intervention children and the comparison children, F (1, 95) = .34, p = .56, η² = .01. However, ANOVA with repeated measures for PA indicated a significant main effect for intervention, F (1, 108) = 18.75, p < .01, η²= .15. In particular, the intervention children had significantly greater increased PA levels than the comparison children across time.

Conclusions: The implementation of the DDR-based exercise program over one school year has no significant effect on children’s self-esteem. The specific reasons of this observation deserve further investigation through in-depth qualitative methodologies. On the other hand, the exercise program demonstrates a significantly positive effect on the intervention children’s 7-day PA levels as compared to the comparison children. Therefore, we conclude that DDR can be implemented as a good alternative physical activity program at elementary schools.