Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown and distance learning affected physical activity (PA) levels among college students. The aims were to assess the effectiveness of a tele-health PA promotion program for 6 weeks, among junior college students, on PA level and on the proportion of physically active students during the pandemic.
A pre-post study design was conducted on 46 students aged 19 (±0.9) years old in Saudi Arabia. The study consisted of online introductory and educational PA classes, followed by a 6-week course during which students received daily online PA promotive messages. Wilcoxon signed-rank and McNemar's tests were used to measure the mean differences in PA level and the changes in proportion of physically active students before and after the program, respectively.
The proportion of students who perform walking increased significantly from 47.4% to 68.4% (
= 0.02), while the number of students who perform moderate PA in their leisure time increased significantly from 38.9% to 69.4% (
= 0.02). No significant differences were detected between other PA levels.
This program is effective in encouraging more college students to be physically active, but not in improving PA levels. Larger scale studies using PA objective measurement tools are needed.