Physical activity has null or small-to-medium positive effects on school-age children's and adolescents' academic achievement according to meta-analyses¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · quant-synthesis r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2020 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Meta-analyses report that different modes of physical activity have null or small-to-medium effects on overall academic achievement. → Barbosa Ana 2020

Evidence¶

Barbosa Ana 2020¶

Barbosa Ana, Whiting Stephen, Simmonds Philippa, Scotini Moreno Rodrigo, Mendes Romeu, Breda João. (2020). Physical Activity and Academic Achievement: An Umbrella Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17165972

q3 · i? · quant-synthesis · r2

Umbrella review of 41 systematic reviews and meta-analyses; 13 meta-analyses provided effect sizes for academic achievement. The review reports the overall effect of different modes of PA had "null [28,32,33] or small to medium [27,30,33,35,37] effects on AA"; no pooled effect size is printed.

"In brief, the overall effect of different modes of PA had null [28,32,33] or small to medium [27,30,33,35,37] effects on AA."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Mathematics is the subject where positive associations with physical activity are found most consistently in systematic reviews, though meta-analytic effects range from null to medium
• Increasing school physical education time shows small-to-medium effects on achievement while active classrooms show mixed effects compared with traditional sedentary classrooms
• Across 169 meta-analyses, 254 variables with 427 effect sizes influence academic achievement; most variables have small or very small effects and none has a large, very large or huge negative effect
• Chronic physical activity shows a medium positive effect on academic achievement while acute physical activity shows a null effect — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Classroom-based physical activity has a huge effect on academic achievement (ES = 2.987) and computer-aided teaching shows huge positive effects (ES = 1.690), while school mobility has a medium negative effect (ES = -.748) — reports the opposite
• Meta-analyses of physical activity effects on youth cognition and academic performance show small effect sizes (0.1–0.3) with substantial heterogeneity — related
• A single bout of acute physical activity increases overall academic outcomes in school-aged youth (Hedge's g = 0.35) — related
• Subgroup analyses by mode of ACS, age, and sex show no significant differences in pooled effect sizes for academic outcomes — related