THE EFFECT OF 16 WEEKS FARTLEK TRAINING ON SELF ESTEEM AND PERCEIVED WELLNESS OF SAUDI UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Introduction Self-esteem is a reflection of both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. It is a private self-evaluation of ones competence and abilities (Coatsworth & Conroy, 2006). It is the evaluative component of self-concept, made up of cognitive, behavioral, affective, and physical components (Bobbio, 2009). Although self-esteem is generally stable, it can fluctuate from time to time, a phenomenon which is referred to as global versus situational self-esteem (National Association for Self-Esteem, 2010). Wellness, "a multidimensional state of being describing the existence of positive health in an individual as exemplified by quality of life and a sense of wellbeing"(Corbin and Pangrazi, 2001). These dimensions represent the whole person (i.e., mind, body, spirit) and, depending upon the model, include physical, social, intellectual, emotional, psychological, spiritual, occupational, and environmental (Corbin et al., 2009; National Wellness Institute, 2009). Statement of the Problem The purpose of study will be to find out the effect of 16 weeks fartlek training program on self-esteem and perceived wellness of Saudi university students. Objectives 1. To examine the effects of 16 weeks supervised fartlek training on following psychological and perceived wellness variables of Saudi University students. a. Self Esteem b. Perceived wellness i. physical ii. social iii. emotional iv. intellectual v. psychological vi. spiritual Method Participants For this study forty undergraduate students enrolled in various courses at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran will be selected randomly. Subjects will be invited to voluntarily participate in this study. Participants who were involved in regular physical activity, at least for the last 6 months will be considered for inclusion in the study. The participants who are obese (BMI 30kg/m2), with cardiovascular diseases, serious illness and who are on prescribed medication, will be excluded from the study. Study Design For the purpose of this study there will be two groups; one experimental group and one controlled group. The subjects for the 2 groups will be selected randomly. Experimental group will be given 16 weeks of supervised fartlek training program twice a week. The duration of each training session will be 40 minutes. All the participants will be administered the self-esteem and perceived wellness questionnaire before and after the 16 weeks of fartlek training program. The control group will be told to continue their normal daily life routine without participating in an exercise program. The test procedures to be administered will be verbally explained and queries and doubts if any raised will be answered. A written informed consent will be obtained prior to the enrolment for the study.The surveys will be distributed in the classroom setting before and after the fartlek training program. Intervention We will offer a supervised whistle-fartlek training program (Mackenzie, 1998) which will be carried out for 16 weeks. Duration of the training program will be 40 minutes (2 times a week). Investigators will use whistle and control the sessions over a synthetic track. Fartlek training will consists of 10 minutes warm up jog; followed by pyramid sessions of 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minutes, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes with a 60 second jog run recovery between each run; and 10 minute warm down jog at the end of training session. When the whistle is blown the athletes run hard until the whistle is blown again. Daily attendance will be recorded. Measures The Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (1965) is a measure of self-esteem. There are 10 items on this scale and the responses choices are on 4-point Likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Total scores range from 0-30, if an individual produced high scores, it is an indicator of high self-esteem. The scale has generally high reliability and the test-retest correlations range from .82 to .88 (Rosenberg, 1986). Perceived Wellness Survey (PWS; Adams, Bezner, Steinhardt, 1997) will be employed to measure the perception of students wellness. The PWS has 6 subscales measuring physical, psychological, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and social wellness. At baseline demographic data for all the participants will be collected including age, height, weight, BMI, how often engaged in physical activity. Hypothesis There will be a significant difference between experimental group and controlled group on self-esteem and perceived wellness after the 16 weeks of fartlek training program. Statistical Analysis Data will be reported as mean and standard deviation. Baseline measurement will be compared for differences between intervention and control group using a t-test for the continuous variables. Mean difference scores will be computed for all variables by subtracting the baseline score from the post-test score. Differences between the groups in average change score will be tested using analysis of covariance. For statistical analyses SPSS 16 for windows will be used. The level of significance will be set at .05 levels.