What Happens to Physical Activity Behavior, Motivation, Self-Concept, and Flow After Completing School? A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

With particular focus on the year following completion of high school, the present study sought to establish the status of young people's physical activity behavior, physical activity motivation, physical activity flow, and physical self-concept. Among a sample of 213 Australian participants assessed in their final year of school and then one year later, findings suggested a significant increase in physical activity behavior and a significant reduction in maladaptive behavioral motivation. On other physical measures, females demonstrated significant improvements in their general physical self-concepts and males demonstrated significant improvements in their health self-concepts. Implications for gender-specific and developmentally targeted interventions are discussed.

Notes

1. Intra-class correlation (ICC; see McGraw & Wong, 1996) is used to assess agreement in minutes of each of the activities reported (i.e., responses to walking, moderate, and vigorous activity items). Kappa (κ; see Looney, 1989) is used to assess the consistency with which participants were classified as “active,” “insufficiently active,” and “sedentary” across repeated administrations of the Active Australia Survey. Values of ICC and Kappa are considered poor if they are in the range of .00–.20, fair .21–.40, moderate .41–.60, substantial .61–.80, and excellent .81–1.00 (see Brown et al., 2004).