Psychological Correlates of Perceived Physical Activity Engagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Previously Active Individuals

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic altered daily life in the United States and disrupted how people engage in routine health behaviors, such as physical activity (PA). This study investigates factors that may have helped people sustain recommended levels of moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA) during this time. Using a cross-sectional design, we recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk in April/May 2020 a sample of individuals who reported that they had met recommended PA guidelines (≥ 150 weekly MVPA minutes; N = 397) prior to structural changes brought about by COVID-19. We assessed via self-report whether these individuals were meeting recommended levels of MVPA during the COVID-19 pandemic, their intrinsic motivation and identified regulation for exercise, exercise self-efficacy, perceived disruption to their exercise routine, and access to resources for PA. Higher identified regulation, self-efficacy, access to PA resources, and lower perceived disruption were associated with meeting PA guidelines during COVID-19. These findings provide insight into factors that may be important for continued engagement in MVPA when one experiences major disruptions to their exercise routine.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.2021.1929811 .

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• exercise
• identified regulation
• physical activity
• self-efficacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Data availability statement

The data and code that support the findings of this study are openly available in OSF at https://osf.io/76pdz/.

Notes

1 Other measures evaluating specific motives in exercise, changes in contextual features of exercise, and exercise routine were assessed in the full study, but are not germane to the present analyses and therefore not discussed further. These measures are described in detail online (https://osf.io/76pdz/).