Improving student participation in campus fitness activities: effectiveness of a university's free-use policy

Abstract

A fitness centre is a facility common on university campuses, intended to increase college students’ rate of physical activity. Fitness centre accessibility is often a goal of university policy. The study presented here examines the effect of one university's free-use policy on participation in on-campus fitness activities. It surveys participation in fitness activities within a 2-year span by 674 undergraduate students from a mid-size university in northern Taiwan, using a three-cross-sectional research design with a stratified random sampling method. Multinomial logistic regression was utilised to assess these data. The results showed that the proportion of the student population reporting that they were current users of the fitness centre had significantly increased 10 and 22 months after the implementation of the free-use policy. Upon further examination, controlling for important variables, a significant effect was detected only after 22 months of the free-use policy, increasing by 3.30 times the odds of a given user being infrequent and by 1.98 the odds that he or she would be habitual as opposed to a non-user. The study supports the idea that a free-use policy is an efficient way to reduce barriers and encourage university students to use the fitness centre.

Keywords:

• university policy
• college students
• fitness centre
• physically active leisure