Persistent Focal Behavior and Physical Activity Performance

This article examines the proclivity and performance attributes of focal students across time and activities using data from 9,345 students. Three systematic focal behavior partitions are examined: Across activities, across time, and across activities and time. A student’s performance is focal if it ends in 0 or 5 for push-ups and 0 for curl-ups. Chi-square tests confirm that individual focal outcomes and systematic focal outcomes occur more frequently than random processes would suggest. In each instance, the only cell that is less populated than random processes would suggest is the one that exhibits no systematic focal behavior and the cell that exhibits the greatest deviation from expected is the full focal cell. Focal students outperform their peers on three activities at two assessments. Students with two-systematically focal outcomes have superior performance to students with no systematic focal outcomes but inferior performance to those with three or four focal outcomes.