Marisa Kuhn, headshot at Memorial Hall

Author: Marisa Kuhn | Major: Exercise Science and Psychology | Semester: Fall 2023

During the fall of 2023, the start of my senior year, I began working on my exercise science research study alongside my mentor, Dr. Erin Howie Hickey. I joined Dr. Howie Hickey’s RECESS lab in the spring of 2023 and have continued to work within this lab for the past year. My thesis is about Elementary children’s physical activity levels and the levels of intensity during recess hours. My study specifically aims to observe children with developmental delays and their physical activity compared to neurotypical children. More research must be conducted on this topic because there is little research currently observing this special population’s exercise levels. I believe that this topic is very important because physical activity is vital for the health and well-being of all individuals, especially young children. According to the ACSM’s recommendations, children should be attaining over 60 minutes of physical activity a day which is not being met. It is suspected that even lower levels of activity are being met by children with developmental delays. My experiment focuses on an intervention called Playworks, which is a national non-profit organization that works with schools in need to design a structured curriculum for recess and PE. The purpose of this research is to see if there is a significant difference in PA intensity levels before and after the Playworks program between children with developmental delays and without these delays during recess. We hypothesize that elementary-aged children with developmental delays will have lower levels of PA and intensity levels during recess compared to children who do not have delays. We also hypothesized that children both with and without these delays will have lower levels of PA intensity levels before the Playworks program compared to after. The student’s physical activity levels will be measured using protocols such as SOPLAY and SOCARP. Both of these are observation instruments that were designed to obtain information numerical data related to observed activity during recess and other physical education scheduled times.

Dr. Howie Hickey and I spent the end of last semester creating a plan for this participant study and aligning it to the already planned Playworks Intervention study. I began to work on creating a list of all the public elementary schools in the state of Arkansas as well as noting contact information. I also assisted in creating an application form to send out to the listed schools describing the Playworks research opportunity. After this list was completed, with the help of other members of the Recess lab team we divided and conquered emailing each school on the list. Over this past semester, the IRB approved my study so I was ready to begin working on more tasks towards the end of the semester. There is still much work to be done, selecting schools, visiting the selected schools in the spring, collecting physical activity observations at each school during recess, and recruiting students and their caregivers with developmental delays to participate in our study. In the spring I plan to write my thesis and defend my research in April at the Undergraduate Research Symposium.

I chose to research this topic because I have always had a passion for working with children with disabilities. In January 2025 I will be attending the University of Arkansas/UAMS Occupational Therapy program where I aspire to work with individuals with physical and mental disabilities. I knew that choosing a research topic that both focused on a population I have a passion for and utilizing what I have learned from my exercise science degree would be both rewarding and enlightening. I also was lucky to be taught by a professor who had a similar passion for children like me and inspired me to follow through with my research goals, Dr. Howie Hickey.

This Honors College Research Grant has enabled me to study and research a topic that I have an overflowing passion for. I have learned how to interact with patients and research subjects especially individuals with developmental delays which will be essential for my future career in Occupational therapy. I also have learned how to measure observational data in a formal research setting which I will also utilize in further research such as my doctoral capstone, and further research in my career to promote evidence-based medicine in the field of OT.