Between beats and pirouettes: Artistic recreation and subjective well-being in students of the Professional Technical College Ing. Mario Quirós Sasso

Abstract

This article communicates the results obtained from a Final Applied Research Project of the Professional Master of Recreation of the University of Costa Rica, carried out during 2019. The objective of the study was to determine the effect of participating or not in an artistic recreation program (urban dance – break dance) in the subjective well-being of adolescent students of the Professional Technical College (CTP) Ing. Mario Quirós Sasso, located in La Unión, Cartago, Costa Rica. The study approach was quasi-experimental quantitative, 34 tenth-year students participated, distributed in two groups previously established by the Institution: a control group (16 students) and an experimental group (18 students). Both groups filled out the life satisfaction scale and the affective balance scale (pretest and posttest); with the experimental group they execute an urban dance artistic recreation program of 10 sessions of 40 minutes per week. To analyze the data, a mixed 2-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) [2 groups x 2 measurements] was performed for each of the variables. The results showed that there were no differences in the variable of satisfaction with life and in the variable of affective balance, a significant difference was visualized in both groups in the posttest. It is concluded that dance is an artistic recreational activity that establishes many benefits for the adolescent population for their physical and mental health; however, this study does not proof a benefit in the subjective well-being of adolescent students of the CTP Ing. Mario Quirós Sasso that participates in a program of urban dance.