The effect of barrier underestimation on weight management and exercise change

Abstract

Over 60% of all Americans are classified as overweight or obese. This represents a major public health concern, as obesity is a risk factor for many other health ailments. While many people intend to lose weight, they often have difficulty changing their current behavioral patterns (as evidenced by modest correlations between intention and behavior). Therefore, one of the major challenges for obesity research is to address the gap between intentions to lose weight and actual behavior. The current study hypothesized that one reason for the intention – behavior discrepancy is that people misestimate the barriers that they will encounter as they follow through with their intentions. Specifically, we hypothesized that people underestimate barriers to exercise and diet, and because of these underestimations, there is a discrepancy between their intentions and behavior. To test these hypotheses, we surveyed faculty and staff at Rutgers University (N = 422) at two time points, 1 year apart. The results indicate that barriers to dieting behaviors are significantly underestimated and this underestimation partially explained the discrepancy between intentions and behavior. The results for barriers to exercise behavior were less consistent, however. As a whole, these results suggest a possible point of behavioral intervention for weight loss.

Keywords:

• Behavioral barriers
• intention
• behavior
• exercise
• weight management

Notes

1. The authors formulated a list of 10 behavioral barriers to exercise. Faculty and staff (n = 8) who were not part of the larger study were recruited to participate in a pilot test of all our measures. These participants provided feedback and explained how they were interpreting the items as they completed the questionnaire. Participants also were given the opportunity to suggest additional barriers that were not included (though no other barriers were mentioned). Exercise barriers that exhibited ceiling or floor effects on their hindrance rating and/or exercise barriers that the pilot study participants misinterpreted or found difficult to answer were removed. The four barriers for exercise that were removed included: the fitness center schedule, availability of a workout partner, travel time, and soreness.

2. Cronbach's alpha for anticipated and retrospective barriers was .72 and .69, respectively. Although a principal axis factor analysis revealed a two-factor structure (factor 1: time, busyness; factor 2: injury, tiredness, willpower, weather), neither of these factors exhibited reliability better than a single factor consisting of all six items, so this two-factor structure was discarded.

3. As with exercise, 10 weight management barriers were originally pilot tested. Four barriers exhibited ceiling/floor effects or were difficult to answer and these were removed. These barriers were: the frequency of eating out, unsupportive comments from others, your body's tendency to regain lost weight, and family members' lack of support.

4. Cronbach's alpha for both anticipated and retrospective barriers was .78. A principal axis factor analysis revealed only one factor.