Motivational antecedent beliefs of endurance, strength, and flexibility activities

Abstract

Research into the correlates of physical activity has focused almost exclusively on physical activity as an omnibus construct. Health Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine, however, advocate physical activity in terms of performing regular endurance, strength, and flexibility activities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the absolute and relative contributions of behavioral, normative, and control beliefs associated with endurance, strength, and flexibility activities within a theory of planned behavior (TPB) structure. Participants were 185 undergraduates who completed measures of the TPB and a 2-week follow-up of endurance, strength, and flexibility behavior. Results using structural equation modeling and Hotelling's t-tests for dependent correlations identified different motivational antecedents for each type of physical activity (p < .05). Endurance behavior was influenced exclusively by behavioral beliefs, flexibility behavior was influenced by normative and control beliefs, and strength behavior was influenced by key behavioral, normative, and control beliefs. The different motivational profiles for each physical activity allude to the importance of tailoring interventions by physical activity type.

Keywords:

• Belief analysis
• physical activity mode
• theory of planned behavior

Acknowledgement

Ryan E. Rhodes is supported by a scholar award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and with funds from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge and Development Fund, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Chris M. Blanchard is supported by an Ontario Scientist Award. We also wish to acknowledge the hard work of data collection and data entry by Kathi Cameron.

Notes

1. A total of 69 univariate belief effects were estimated within the fixed TPB models. Fit statistics ranged from δχ² 1.28 to 18.66 but each individual model fit has not been included for the sake of parsimony.