Influencing Adolescent Leisure Motivation: Intervention Effects of Health Wise South Africa

Abstract

This study investigates changes in self-reported motivation for leisure due to participation in Health Wise, a high school curriculum aimed at decreasing risk behavior and promoting health behavior. Participants were 2,193 mixed race adolescents (M = 14 years old) from 9 schools (4 intervention, 5 control) near Cape Town, South Africa. Students in the Health Wise school with the greatest involvement in teacher training and implementation fidelity reported increased intrinsic and identified motivation and decreased introjected motivation and amotivation compared to students in control schools. These results point to the potential for intervention programming to influence leisure motivation among adolescents in South Africa and represent a first step toward identifying leisure motivation as a mediator of program effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescents
• intervention
• leisure motivation
• self-detrmination theory