Health Education Research Advance Access originally published online on March 8, 2007
Health Education Research 2008 23(1):125-136; doi:10.1093/her/cym010
Factors associated with young children's self-perceived physical competence and self-reported physical activity
1 Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kristianstad University, 291 88 Kristianstad, Sweden
2 Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden
3 Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
4 Department of Health Sciences, Kristianstad University, 291 88 Kristianstad, Sweden
* Correspondence to: A.-C. Sollerhed. E-mail: ann-christin.sollerhed{at}husa.hkr.se
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Abstract |
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The aim of this study was to identify factors associated with self-reported physical activity (PA), self-perceived physical fitness and competence in physical education (PE) among young children. The study included physical tests, anthropometric measures and a questionnaire. The study group comprised 206 children (114 boys and 92 girls, aged 8–12 years). Positive Odds Ratio was used in the logistic regression analyses. High level of self-reported PA was associated with membership of sport clubs and high self-perceived physical fitness. Variables associated with high self-perceived competence in PE were low age, high physical performance, living with both parents, high self-perceived physical fitness, male gender and enjoying PE. Variables associated with high self-perceived physical fitness were low age, high performance in endurance running, high self-reported PA, positive self-perceived body function and high self-perceived competence in PE. Correlations between children's self-perceived competence in PE and actual measured physical performance, between the self-perceived fitness and endurance performance and between self-reported PA and physical performance could be seen as a form of concurrent validity. One implication of the study for practitioners might be that children's own perceptions of their physical competence and activity levels could be used to roughly identify groups of children who are at risk of remaining physically inactive and therefore more prone to be unhealthy.
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Introduction |
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Physical inactivity is a major public health problem. Physical activity (PA) and physical fitness are important for healthy growth in children [1]. Fitness in childhood tends to track into adulthood [2–5], and is suggested to reduce the risk of diseases in adulthood [6], such as cardiovascular diseases [7] and obesity [8]. Besides the physical benefits, childhood PA is important for socialization into a physically active lifestyle [9].
Childhood is considered to be an active stage of life, but many studies indicate that children have become less physically active in recent decades [10]. Many children in developed countries have been shown to be physically inactive and spending a great part of their free time in sedentary pastimes [6, 11–14]. Although schools are important arenas for children's PA, the allocated time for physical education (PE) has been cut in many countries during the last few decades [15].
A remarkable decline in frequency of PA after the age of 12 can be seen among children [16]. Even at very young age, boys are reported to participate in more PA than girls [17], especially in more vigorous activity [9]. According to Armstrong et al. [18], boys’ activity levels did not decline so early in life as it did progressively among girls. From 11–13 years, PA decreased, with more girls than boys becoming inactive.
General competence could be differentiated into three domains: cognitive, social and physical [19]. Physical self-esteem consists of an aggregate of perceived sport competence, bodily attractiveness, physical strength and physical fitness [20]. Self-esteem is seen as an inherent consequence of successfully mastering motor skills [21]. Harter's model of competence stresses the important role of self-perceptions of competence in motivational processes. Individuals who perceive that they are competent are more intrinsically motivated to pursue high levels of challenge and are more persistent and less anxious during their involvement [19]. Perceptions of one's physical competence appeared to influence both physical achievement and motivational orientation. Children tend to behave and to interpret their experiences in ways that preserve or confirm self-judgements and expectations [21].
Perceived competence appears to influence intrinsic motivation in PE, and to be a deciding factor affecting children's participation in PA [22–25]. PA self-efficacy, participation in community sports and beliefs regarding PA outcomes were found to be important predictors of PA behaviour in rural youth [26]. Boys had higher perceptions of sport competence [27, 28] while girls believed themselves more competent at reading and music [29]. Self-perceptions of competence declined as children got older [28].
Studies have shown different results concerning the capability of children to assess their motor competence. Rudisill et al. [30] found that 9- to 11-year-old children could assess personal motor competence fairly accurately, while Raudsepp and Liblik [31] showed that 10- to 13-year-old children could only moderately assess personal motor competence.
Children's perceptions of what is responsible for their successful and unsuccessful endeavours seem to be the most important links to future achievement and self-esteem [19]. One's perceptions of ability appear to have a more influential effect on future achievement and motivated behaviour, even more than actual performance [32].
In keeping with the theories of Phillips [32] and Harter [19] about the importance of self-perceptions for future motivated behaviour, the purpose of the study was to combine physiological and psychological measures in order to further the understanding of children's PA levels, physical status and physical self-perceptions in a public health perspective. The specific aim was to identify factors associated with the three variables: self-reported PA, self-perceived competence in PE and self-perceived physical fitness. Factors relevant to public health and therefore included in the model and analyses were children's sport club membership, body mass index (BMI), physical performance, daily meals, daily TV watching, living with both parents, self-perceived body function, feeling comfortable in school, subjective health, global quality of life and enjoying PE. An additional aim was to investigate associations between self-reported PA, self-perceived competence in PE and actual measured physical performance.
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Methods |
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This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee at the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University (LU 520-00) in Sweden. Written information about the study was given to and informed consent was obtained from every participant's parents.
The study was conducted in December 2000 and comprised 206 children (114 boys and 92 girls) aged 8–12 years from two schools in southern Sweden. The area was a traditional Swedish rural area with no immigrants, and just a few adopted children. The two schools were selected because they were similar in size, conditions as gender distribution and academic performance and influences from society outside school, socioeconomic background and rural location. In all, few studies have been performed with rural children. The study design was cross-sectional, but also gives a baseline measure in a longitudinal study. After the baseline measurement, an intervention study started with expanded PE in one of the schools and the other school following the stipulated curricular time for PE. However, in this study data from the baseline from both schools were combined and used.
A questionnaire was used to collect information on the study variables and was completed during school hours before the children performed physical tests. The questionnaire included questions about perceptions of competence in PE, perceptions of competence in different school subjects, self-perceived physical fitness, self-reported PA, opinions about PE in school, subjective health, relations to teachers and peers and global quality of life. To get an approximation of children's own perception of how often they were physically active, the question used was ‘How often do you exercise in leisure time (even brisk walking is counted as exercise)?’ with the four response categories ‘often, sometimes, seldom and never'. Two groups were formed out of the four response categories: 1, high level of PA (often) and 2, low level of PA (sometimes/seldom/never). The sport club membership rate was assessed by the question ‘Are you a member in a sport club?’ with the two response categories ‘yes or no'. Self-perceived physical fitness was assessed by the question ‘How do you think your physical fitness is?’ with the five response categories ‘very good, quite good, neither good nor bad, quite bad, very bad'. Self-perceived competence in PE was assessed by the question ‘How good do you think you are at PE?’ with the five response categories: ‘very good, fairly good, neither good nor bad, not so good, not at all good'.
Self-perceived body function was assessed by the statement ‘I am satisfied with my body function’ with the five response categories ‘agree totally, agree partly, do not agree nor disagree, disagree partly, disagree totally'. Subjective health was assessed by the question ‘We all have small ailments sometimes (colds, for example), but you can feel more or less good anyway. How do you feel most of the time?’ with the five response categories ‘very good, quite good, neither good nor bad, quite bad, very bad'. Global quality of life was assessed by the question ‘If you think about how things are at home, in school, in leisure time and everywhere else you can think of, how are you getting on with your life?’ with the five response categories ‘very good, quite good, neither good nor bad, quite bad, very bad'. The intake of daily meals was assessed by the question ‘How often do you eat breakfast/lunch/dinner during an ordinary school week?’. Two groups were formed: 1, eat all meals every day and 2, remaining combinations. Feeling comfortable in school was assessed by the question ‘Do you feel comfortable in school?’ with the five response categories ‘very comfortable, quite comfortable, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, quite uncomfortable, very uncomfortable'. Enjoying PE was assessed by the question ‘What do you think of PE in school?’. There were five response categories ‘great fun, quite fun, neither fun nor boring, quite boring, very boring'. Television watching was assessed by the question ‘About how long did you watch TV yesterday?’ with five response categories ‘not at all, less than one hour, one to two hours, two to three hours, more than three hours'.
Respondents in our study were 8–12 years old. Questionnaires were piloted with 20 children aged 8–12. As special attention was paid to the children's ability to understand and answer the questions, children in the pilot testing filled in the questionnaire and were individually interviewed afterwards about how they understood the questions and the response format. The questions were tested in all ages. Also teachers in elementary school were consulted to ensure that the words in the questionnaire were understandable for the children. As a result of the pilot study reformulations of questions concerning school subjects were done, questions about parents’ work were omitted and some ambiguous words were deleted. But on the whole, the children were able to understand the questions. Questions from the questionnaire presented in this article consisted of understandable words in Swedish for children, although the English translations might seem more difficult. The questionnaire consisted of both questions from existing questionnaires and questions created by the authors. Questions from previously performed studies were for example questions about subjective health and global life quality. Irrespective of previous quality description of the questions, a test–retest procedure was performed within a 3-week period as a reliability test with all questions. Only questions with at least a moderate strength of agreement (
> 0.40) according to Altman [33] were used in the analyses. Some 207 children were approached to participate in this study, with 99.5% of parents giving consent for participation. Among children with parental consent (n = 206), 100% completed the questionnaire and 99% completed all the physical tests. Questionnaires were distributed and surveyed by one of the researchers (G.E.) who is the author of several handbooks on questionnaire methods and who has considerable practical experiences from surveys. Children completed the questionnaires during school lessons and they could ask if they did not understand the questions. Among children 8–9 years old, all questions were read by the researcher who also helped children with difficulties. Conditions were ensured to be the same for all classes—same researcher, same instructions, same period of time and same routines.
The measures used to assess actual physical performance were 11 physical tests that comprised the physical index. This index was calculated as 
, where i was the number of the test from one to 11, xi was the individual's result standardized for age in test number i, 
was the group mean and si was the standard deviation for test i. The standardized physical index residuals were distributed around the mean 0. A high physical index indicated high physical capacity of the individual and a low index low capacity.
The tests were chosen because they could be carried out in a field-testing situation and were presumed to give a representative spectrum of the children's physical capacity. The test battery comprised aerobic fitness, muscular strength in upper body, hands, abdomen and legs, flexibility, balance and motor skills. Seven of the 11 physical tests were taken from the EUROFIT [34] test battery which has been used in several studies: sit-ups, standing broad jump, bent arm hang, hand grip, sit and reach, plate tapping and shuttle run. To test the dynamic balance, the test person stood on one foot turning the head from side to side [35]. The time maintained in seconds was registered.
Endurance performance was assessed by a running test for 6 min, which was developed from the one-mile running test [36]. This test was chosen because it gives a valid measure and is time-efficient. Endurance performance in young children has been shown to be associated with VO2 max, which is accepted as a good reference standard of cardiorespiratory fitness [37]. High physical fitness, i.e. high-endurance running performance, was associated with more favourable cardiovascular disease risk profiles [38]. The test was performed indoors in a gym on a track with 
70 m in circumference.
Two tests were constructed to include learned motor skills—rope skipping and ball bouncing. The children skipped for 30 s and correct skips with the rope were counted. The number of correct bounce catches in 30 s was counted. The period of 30 s was chosen because it was long enough to evaluate the skills, was time-efficient and to synchronize to the tests in the EUROFIT test battery. Children did one round of the tests.
Body height, body weight, waist and hip circumferences were measured and were used for calculation of the BMI, weight/height2 (kg m–2) and the waist-to-hip ratio. One measure of each anthropometric data was taken. As a control, 30 children in each school were selected to be measured 1 week after the ordinary measuring with high conformity. In the logistic regression analyses, the residuals were used.
Children from both schools were treated the same. Both physical tests and anthropometrical measuring were obtained by one of the researchers (A.-C.S.), experienced PE teacher and trained in physical testing with experience from data collecting in previously performed studies. Children were tested individually in all tests except in the endurance test where groups of eight to 10 children ran at the same time. For all students, the standardized test protocols used for the physical performance were linked to the questionnaire data and the data were analysed at an individual level. To avoid influences from the gender and age distribution in the two schools, BMI and physical index were calculated separately for boys and for girls and standardized for age. In order to standardize each test result for age, a regression line was fitted to the data, where age was the independent variable and the test score the dependent variable. For each individual, the residual was calculated as the difference between the real score and the predicted score. Thus, a positive residual implies a test result better than expected according to age, and vice versa for a negative residual.
Statistical methods
The significance of differences in categorical data, nominal and ordinal scales (see Table I), was tested by the chi-square test. Numerical variables (see Table I) were tested by Student's t-test. Analysis of variance was used for assessing the significance of differences between means in different groups of PA, self-perceived competence in PE and self-perceived physical fitness. Interactions between self-reported PA, self-perceived competence in PE and self-perceived physical fitness and independent variables were studied by logistic regression. The independent variables were categorized into two groups, ‘ARE-variables’ (describing the being and doing) and ‘THINK-variables’ (describing thoughts and attitudes) (Table I). All variables were dichotomized according to the median value. Because of the salutogenic approach in the study, the results of the logistic regression analyses were expressed as Positive Odds Ratio (POR) and 95% confidence intervals. POR was calculated as the odds ratio, but the positive and negative outcomes were changed [39]. If for example POR = 2.0, when comparing those with high and low self-perceived competence in PE, the interpretation is that those with high self-perceived competence in PE are twice as likely as those with low self-perceived competence in PE to have a positive outcome in the explanatory variable. The definitions of variables in the logistic regressions can be seen in Table I. For all analyses, the level of significance was set at P < 0.05. Data analyses were carried out using SPSS version 10.0.
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Results |
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Factors associated with self-reported PA, self-perceived competence in PE and self-perceived physical fitness
As can be seen in Table II, a high level of self-reported PA was associated with membership of a sport club (POR = 3.4) and high self-perceived physical fitness (POR = 2.5). High self-perceived competence in PE was associated with low age (POR = 1.5), male gender (POR = 2.3), high physical index (POR = 2.4), living with both parents (POR = 2.8), high self-perceived physical fitness (POR = 5.5) and enjoying PE (POR = 4.8). High self-perceived physical fitness was associated with low age (POR = 1.8), high level of self-reported PA (POR = 2.9), high performance in endurance running (POR = 2.0), positive self-perceived body function (POR = 4.1) and high self-perceived competence in PE (POR = 5.6). All other factors included in the analyses were non-significant.
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Significant associations were found between the children's self-perceived physical fitness and their self-reported PA, but no association was found between their self-perceived competence in PE and their self-reported PA. Significant associations were found between self-perceived competence in PE and self-perceived physical fitness. Significant associations are illustrated in Fig. I.
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Associations between self-reported PA, self-perceived competence in PE, self-perceived physical fitness and actual measured physical performance
Of 205 children, 105 reported that they exercised often (51%). This group of children with high level of PA (105 children) had a higher physical index than the other group of children with low level of PA (100 children) (mean 0.65 and –0.78, respectively; P = 0.003). The physically active children also had higher results in endurance performance residuals than the not so active children (mean 0.19 and –0.20, respectively; P = 0.004). Concerning the anthropometric measures, the physically active children had lower BMI residuals (mean –0.48 and 0.50, respectively; P = 0.020) and waist-hip ratio residuals (mean –0.0091 and 0.0094, respectively; P = 0.003).
A higher percentage of physically active children were satisfied with their body function than not so active children (72 and 55%, respectively; P = 0.009) irrespective of BMI. Physically active children perceived themselves to be competent in PE to a higher extent than not so active children (72 and 58%, respectively; P = 0.040). They also perceived their physical fitness to be good to a higher extent (56 and 30%, respectively; P <0.001) (Table III).
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A stepwise distribution of mean physical index could be seen in the groups of children with different self-reported PA, self-perceived competence in PE and self-perceived physical fitness. The highest mean physical index was found among children with high self-reported PA, high self-perceived competence in PE and high self-perceived physical fitness (Table IV).
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Discussion |
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In our study, self-perceived physical competence among children, aged 8–12 years, was investigated from two different aspects—competence in PE and physical fitness. These two aspects were found to be associated, but they also reflected different situations for the participant. The children seemed to have a sense of their physical fitness and competence in PE and were able to assess it fairly accurately. Asking children about their self-perceived physical competence might be a way to roughly identify groups of children at higher risk of remaining physically inactive as adolescents and adults. Perceived competence has been shown to be a deciding factor for children's participation in PA [22], and those who perceive themselves as competent will persist longer in current and future activities [19]. The combination of low physical self-esteem and low fitness levels could be seen as a high risk factor for future PA behaviour. It has been shown that fitness levels in childhood tend to track into adulthood [2, 5] and self-perceptions have great influence on future behaviour [32] and involvement in PA [40]. A high physical status together with high perceived physical competence could be an advantage for future health among children in our study, whereas low physical status together with low self-perception could be the opposite. It must be of great interest for public health strategists to identify children with low physical self-esteem and low physical status as early as possible when there is still time for action.
The two aspects of physical competence reflect different situations for the child. Self-perceived physical fitness could be seen as a feeling of stamina, an internal personal quality, not associated with a specific situation, while competence in PE could be seen as consisting of different physical abilities performed in the PE situation. PE is a very complex and a very special situation of PA comprising many factors, for example, teacher behaviour and teaching, design of halls, national and local curricula, composition of classes, etc. PE contains a mixture of PA—outdoor activities, ball games, gymnastics, dance, etc. These different activities imply different abilities and the self-perceived competence in PE among children could reflect their perceived physical competence in all, with both social comparison with peers, successful mastery attempts, ease of learning new skills, effort and self-attributions. Some children do not have any prior experience of sport activities in leisure time and the role of perceived competence in PE is central [25]. Young age was a predictor for high self-perceived physical competence, which is in accordance with other studies [28].
Boys had higher perceptions of their competence in PE than girls had, which is in accordance with other studies [19, 27, 28]. In our study, one interesting finding was that boys perceived their competence higher than girls in the school situation, but no gender difference was found in the perception of physical fitness. This could indicate that boys' and girls' self-perceived physical competence is similar unless they relate it to the situation in school. There could be several explanations for this. One may be that PE is more adjusted to boys through activity choice, with most of the time spent on ball games or other activities traditionally more associated with boys. Girls seem to take boys' motor achievements as a point of reference [19, 41] and might discount their talent when performing. This might be especially obvious when the content of PE is more adjusted to boys. As girls participate in less PA than boys do [17], especially in more vigorous activity [9], and their PA declines earlier in life [18], school PE must devote special effort to the early physical development of girls. PE is a special arena supervised by society for best development of physical qualities, self-perceptions and gender differentiation, and responsibility must be taken for both girls and boys.
Enjoyment of PE was strongly associated with self-perceived competence in PE. The balance between skills and challenge is essential for the feeling of enjoyment and competence. Children who thought PE was fun also perceived their competence as high. People high on kinaesthetic activities described themselves as free and more positive in their self-perception [42]. Enjoyment seems to be a major reason for the children to be physically active, which is in accordance with Hagger et al. [43]. If children find PE and PA pleasant and enjoyable, they probably engage in PA more often and thus will improve their fitness and competence and also perceive their competence in PE as good. The self-perceived physical competence could influence the motivation to do more PA, which is in accordance with Weiss and Ebbeck [21]. An interesting observation in our study was that children's PA and self-perceived body function were associated with physical fitness, but not with competence in PE. The association between self-perceived body function and self-perceived physical fitness could be seen as facets of the internal physical quality linked to the individual independent of situation, while self-perceived competence in PE includes both individual and situational experiences. It must be important for school PE to optimize the frequency of situations of positive experiences to strengthen the internal perceptions of physical competence.
When comparing active and less active children according to self-reports, the active children had a higher physical index, lower BMI and waist-to-hip ratio, which have been shown to be more favourable for health [44–46]. The differences in anthropometric measures and activity levels between these two groups of children might be of importance for future health, as body composition and physical fitness in childhood tend to track into adulthood [2, 5, 9]. Active children also perceived their body function as better and their competence in PE as higher than more inactive children did. They seemed to be satisfied with their body experiences, which might influence the motivation to participate in PA. Sonstroem and Morgan [47] proposed that effects of PA can change the body image and by extension the self-esteem. Our study highlights the interesting associations between PA, body composition, self-perceived body function, fitness and competence in PE, physical performance and motivation to do PA. However, conclusions about the causality were difficult to draw and must be left for future research. Planinsec and Fosnaric [48] also showed that PA and perceived physical concept were related but the direction of the relationship was unclear. According to Goudas et al. [49], motivation for PE was correlated with participation in PA in leisure time.
Television watching has often been associated with physically inactive behaviour among children. In our study, results showed that PA was not inversely associated with watching television. Active children appeared to manage to accomplish both physically active and sedentary behaviours, which is in accordance with a study by Strauss et al. [50]. The parents' socioeconomic status was not investigated because these questions were too difficult to answer and was excluded after the pilot testing procedure. However, the results showed that living with both parents was associated with the self-perceived competence in PE and that membership and participation in sport clubs were associated with a high level of PA. The organization of participation in sport clubs involves parents and could be more difficult to carry out for single parents. The family environment has been shown to be associated with exercise participation [51, 52]. The remainder of factors included in the regression model (subjective health, global quality of life, daily meals and the comfort in school) were not significantly associated with self-perceived fitness, self-perceived competence in PE or self-reported PA.
The limitations of the study should be considered. The study design was cross-sectional, which limits the conclusions about causality. Further, the study gives a baseline measure in a longitudinal study, where interesting results hopefully can be shown in the future. Concerning the physical measurements, it is impossible to make clear what is genetic and what is a result of exercise, but they give an interesting picture of the children's physical status independent of influences of genes or behaviour. The young children reported their PA which could be seen as a limitation. Difficulties in measuring PA are well known especially when young children report PA. Self-reported PAs are memories of the behaviour that have been filtered through perceptions. However, the focus in this study was on the children's own perceptions of their PA. An interesting finding was that there is a correlation between physical index and self-reported PA. This could be seen as concurrent validity and it can be assumed that children had at least some kind of sense of being active or not.
Few studies comprising healthy children's physical status and their perceived competence are performed and the study highlights interesting associations between physiological and psychological factors. The approach in this study has been salutogenic, with the focus on the positive characteristics for a healthy child. Public health strategy and actions for promoting a physically active lifestyle must start with young individuals, where there is a call for action. As all children with different social background attend school, this is an important arena for promoting PA. Research in this area could be of importance for the practice. One of the main findings was the correlations between children's perception of their competence in PE and actual measured physical performance, between the perception of fitness and endurance performance and between self-reported PA and physical performance, which could be seen as a form of concurrent validity.
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Conclusion |
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The most important findings of the study were the associations between self-perceived physical competence and measured physical performance which indicated that the young children had a fairly accurate sense of their physical status. Physically active children performed better in the physical tests, had more favourable BMI and waist circumferences and had more positive self-perceptions about their physical competence and body functions than less active children, indicating that children give a quite realistic picture of their PA. One important implication of the study for practitioners might be that children's own perceptions of their physical competence in PE and activity levels could be used to roughly identify groups of children who are at risk of remaining physically inactive and therefore more prone to be unhealthy.
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Conflict of interest statement |
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None declared.
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References |
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Received on June 21, 2005; accepted on November 20, 2006
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