Publications by authors named "Kelly Ramella"
Background: The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans states all children should be provided with various physical activity opportunities; however, school play spaces are often unaccommodating to students with disabilities and this limitation may be exacerbated in lower-income schools.
Objective: The purpose of the study was to compare elementary school play space accessibility among children with and without disabilities at lower- and higher-income schools.
Methods: This cross-sectional study utilized an online survey assessing the perceived accessibility of play spaces for students with and without disabilities in low- and high-income schools administered to 178 physical education teachers across Arizona.
Recess is a critical source of physical, social and emotional health and well-being for children, but generally not prioritized during online learning. A 13-week structured recreation intervention was delivered virtually during recess to students in the fifth and sixth grades (age 10-12 years; N = 71) at one elementary school (Phoenix, AZ, USA). We used embedded mixed method with a prospective pre-/post-design to measure change in student-reported emotion and qualities of engagement in an online setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: School connectedness (SC) is associated with improved health and academic outcomes. The purposes of this study were to explore factors contributing to students' perceptions of SC and if participation in structured recreation at school was associated with SC.
Methods: We used concurrent mixed-methods including cross-sectional qualitative data to explore factors contributing to SC among fifth- and sixth-grade students at 2 schools in Phoenix, AZ, USA (N = 330), and quantitative measures to explore the association between SC and recreation participation (N = 129).