A Sustainable Swedish School Intervention with Extra Aerobic Exercise—Its Organization and Effects on Physical Fitness and Academic Achievement

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled "A sustainable school intervention with extra aerobic training -organization and effects on physical fitness and academic achievements "deals with an extremely interesting topic or how the protection of the body (physical activity) can influence the mind and therefore the academic performance of young adolescents.

The study is well organized and it would be interested to apply this protocol also to adolescents from different countries to compare the response.

The tables are clear and easy to understand.

However, I have some suggestions for the authors:

1. Reducing the abstract is too long and dispersive, you need to be concise, briefly state the purpose of the work and the results.
2. Specify whether sampling was also affected by the lockdown period. The Covid-19 pandemic is known to have affected the psycho-physical well-being of many young adolescents
3. Specify the eating habits of the participants; food as well as non-activity can influence the learning state and general well-being.
4. The discussion, on the other hand, must be amalgamated, the subparagraphs are not needed, a common thread is needed.
5. If there are similar studies, mention; moreover I would also make a comparison between amateur activity (the one reported in the work) and competitive activity. In this way to understand how sport / physical activity can actually positively influence (this point to be made explicit in the discussion)
6. Then always compare physical and amateur activity not only on learning but on the general state of health (such a point to be made explicit in the discussion)
7. Also compare different age groups.

Therefore I suggest some works that could be of support: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-019-3279-6; https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5863-1; DOI: 10.35469 / ak.2018.171; doi: 10.3390 / ijerph17176065; doi: 10.3390 / antibiotics9060332; doi: 10.3390 / jcm9082540; doi: 10.3390 / antibiotics9060306; doi: 10.3390 / ijerph17249424; doi: 10.3390 / ijerph18041502.

Author Response

Please see the attached file for answers to reviewer 1.

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript named “A sustainable school intervention with extra aerobic training - organization and effects on physical fitness and academic achievements”  is interesting for the readers of Sustainability; however, before acceptance, major revisions must be performed.

The authors have studied for  two-years a school intervention in a complex and well-structured paper. All the results are well discuss and further more they encourage the physical education teachers that organizing the school intervention to became co-researchers.

In my opinion a revision of the tables (not only formal) and the results reported in the text (that are connected with them): the table are to much and the results are repeated in table and in the text. An effort t could be done to reduce the complexity and emphasize the more relevant results (for example reporting something as appendix or at the end of the work ) maybe Par 3.1. could be cut ?

 

Minor revision:

• Pag 3 par 2.2 ….”an area with high diversity participated. “ it is better to specificate: high socio-economic diversity?…. As in the follow
• Pag 4 first row “In this area school families” remove school
• “To ensure that this desired physical intensity level was reached, the pupils performed activities at an intensity being hard, but not vary hard, according to rate of perceived exertion [9].” Explain better in term of RPE. Hard and very hard
• “intentionally scheduled in direct connection” explain what is the meaning
• Pag 6 Std.Err. standard error
• Table 1 Fitness absolute values  why are the values absolute? I think that are only positive. I suggest to remove “absolute”. Remove Mean (± SD)

• Change in %  replace with  “percentual change”
• Table 2 “mean.value”  remove full stop. Remove index  and Mean (± SD)

• Pag 7 first row with *,. p <0.05.   remove comma and full stop  and replace “…..Is marked with * when p<0.05”
• Table 3 as table 1 I suggest to remove “absolute” and  Mean (± SD)
• 3.2.1.1. in this paragraph from 13.2 to 14.5 …. "From" and some numbers are in italics three times pag 12 and pag 13
• Figure 1 remove the question mark, reduce fonts 
• Pag 17 “regarding average values for: aerobic capacity”.       Remove “:”

 

• Pag 19 “min/w to 270 min/v  “ the units have to be the same

 

• “During the two-year period, however, significantly improved grades were noted for the subjects Swe-dish, English and PE in each of the three schools, including school B, which had pupils with a more multicultural background and belonged to families with lower socioeconom-ics compared to schools A and C.” This results should  be emphasized

• twice per week à 30 minutes. Maybe à=of?

Author Response

Please see the attached file for answers to reviewer 2.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

We appreciate the efforts of the authors. Without e, however, I consider that due to its format, type and form, it cannot be published in this magazine.

First of all, the absract cannot have that extension. It is confusing and too long, it does not follow the structure of a normal abstract. Too long background and introduction, unclear methodology, and non-existent hypothesis and justification.

Number of keywords ¿? ¿? ¿? ¿?

The introduction seems salvageable to me. However, at a methodological level, too extensive, lacking specificity, too abundant. Too small a sample to be significant. Consequently, the statistical treatment for this type of studies and samples is not appropriate.

Tables seem copied and pasted, formatting lacks. The results are complex to understand. Lack of specificity.

The discussion should be an integral and structured element in which all the above information is summarized.

Author Response

Please, see the attched file for anwers to reviewer 3.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

If the sample focuses on Swedish students, this should be indicated in the title.

Methodologically..."with 30-minute heart-rate-boosting activities". This is a scientific article, not a local newspaper. The intervention program must be specified specifically so that it can be replicated by other researchers.

The intervention process needs to be justified and explained more precisely. Was there prior familiarization? What type of activity was carried out? Was it continuous, interval, extensive, intensive work? Was the RH maintained for 30 min?
"An endurance strength test for the abdominal and hip flexor muscles" .- As a professor in sports training, I am sorry to see that these types of tests are still being done, and more so in this population.

The results section, whose statistical analysis is ideal for the type of study, despite this, the tables (quantity), etc., make the interpretation excessively complex.

In addition, the discussion is short and leaves many elements in depth to be discussed, such as differences between genders or between different subjects.

I feel that methodologically the study has limitations that prevent its publication. The fact of including 8 authors for a study of this type is interesting.... 

Author Response

Thanks to reviewer's comments, we have revised the manuscript, please review again.

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Methodological errors remain persistent and inherent to the research project. Errors are intrinsic to the research methodology used. I reiterate that this work should be presented in another journal

Author Response

 Answers to reviewer 3,  2022 – 01- 30

Thank you again for valuable comments which have now even further improved the manuscript (see attached file). Based on your suggestions, we have in the manuscript added information with green text in the Title, Method section 2.3 and 2.4 (page 3-5) and in the Discussion (page 16-17).     

Here below we answer your comments.

Title. The word “Swedish” has now been added in the title.

Methods 2.3 Intervention. We have now added extensive descriptions and specifications about the content in the various training sessions and how the matching was attained between the intensity level of ≥ 70% of HR-max and the RPE-level of ≥15.

2.4 Physical fitness tests. We have now added information about the validity of using the situp-test in our intervention. 

Further comments to you about the used situp-test: Measurement of endurance strength in the abdominal and hip flexor muscles with a sit-up while lifting the whole trunk in a hip flexion motion is a well-known and established test for field test contexts, in the way that has been performed by the pupils in the present study.

     For example, this situp-test has been used regularly for many young conscripts nationwide in the Finnish military service. Taanila et al. (2012) have found an association between the results in the situp-test (repeats/60 seconds) and lower back pain and problems (Taanila et al. 2012= reference No. 18 in the manuscript). Thus, they found among conscripts a practically significant implication for this situp-test, which the pupils in our study performed in the same way.

     Moreover, the activity levels in several abdominal and hip flexor muscles during such sit-ups and also how the muscle activation then may change depending on if the legs are bent or straight, and with supported feet or not, as well as at various angles. This has previously been reported by us (Andersson et al. 1997= reference No. 19 in the manuscript) and in other studies of our research group. So, this test has been evaluated in that sense that both the abdominal and hip flexor muscles are significantly activated to a similar amount between subjects (Andersson et al. 1997= reference No. 18 in the manuscript).

     In addition, tests for the abdominal and hip flexor muscles with situps are also described in the book “ESSA´s student manual for health, exercise and sport assessment” (Coombes & Skinner 2014 = reference No. 17 in the manuscript).

     Thus, the various tests in our study have been selected to be able to be performed without expensive laboratory equipment, but as practical tests for field contexts. And one of our tests used is the situp-test which in our opinion has its relevance in the intervention.

3. Results

We wish to keep the different tables in the manuscript. Then the reader can see the results from different aspects and comparisons. In the manuscript text, we have highlighted the main results from the various tables to facilitate the understanding of the central findings for the reader.

4. Discussion 4.1 Main findings

According to your suggestion, we have now added text (and another reference) with some information regarding aspects of different genders and subjects from various multicultural backgrounds.

Regarding the included authors all have been involved in various ways as reported in the Author Contributions.

       Finally, although there are some limitations to our study, we hope that this longitudinal intervention may be valuable to different readers of the journal Sustainability. The hope is that the information about the organization of the present project can be useful to consider when other school initiatives with extra physical training are to be carried out and evaluated in a simple, sustainable and cost-effective way.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx