KINESIOLOGY IN EUROPE AND UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - DIFFERENCES IN NUMBER AND NAMES OF EUROPEAN AND USA HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

The purpose of this study was to determe the differences between Europe and United States of America in the number of departmants, faculties or universities that offers degree in human movement science according to their names. Eight hundred and fifty eight (n=858) different university departments in the broad field of human movement study programmes from United States of America and one hundred and twelve (n=112) departments from Europe was embraced. All of them were found using internet as the main source of information. The list of higher education study programmes in USA was obtained from the web page of the American Kinesiology Association (www.americankinesiology.org). There are large differences in number of higher education study programmes in USA (n=858) compared to Europe (n=122). Most frequently, the terms used for human movement study programes in USA are health (n=261), physical education (n=172) and kinesiology (n=145). In Europe the most frequently used terms in names of the departments and faculties are sport (n=54), physical education (n=29) and exercise (n=10). In Europe there is only one departmant whose names included the term health. By using the Chi-test following statistically significant differences between USA and Europe in the number of departments named physical education, kinesiology and exercise were determined. The differences between USA and Europes regarding the number and names of sport studies are based on social, economic and historical differences between USA and Europe. When comparing the term kinesiology to other names of human movement departmants, faculties or universities it can be concluded that term kinesiology in rarely used in Europe but widely in USA. Nevertheless kinesiology is unified name for the whole academic area of the study of human movement. Kinesiology as the fundamental scientific U field is applied in different areas such as sport, physical education, health, recreation, physical therapy (kinesitherapy), sport management, etc. and it is superordinate to them. It embraces the principals that are fundamental to all applied fields of kinesiology.