Cognitive, affective, and global attitude toward physical activity with different intensities

Abstract

ABSTRACT Objectives: The purposes of this study were to determine the differences of college students' attitudes toward physical activity (PA) with different intensities and the contributions of students' cognitive and affective attitude to their global attitude toward PA. Design: This study employed a cross-sectional design. A total of 159 college students completed validated measures of global, cognitive, and affective attitude for general, vigorous, moderate, and light PA, respectively. Repeated-measure one-way ANOVAs were conducted to determine the differences of students' attitude toward PA with different intensities. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine the contributions of cognitive and affective attitude to global attitude for each type of PA. Results: Students had significantly higher levels of cognitive attitude toward moderate PA than vigorous and light PA. They had significantly higher levels of affective attitude toward light PA than moderate and vigorous PA and higher levels of affective attitude toward moderate PA than vigorous PA. They also had significantly lower levels of global attitude toward vigorous PA than light and moderate PA. This study also showed that both cognitive and affective attitude contributed to global attitude and cognitive attitude had a stronger influence than affective attitude. Conclusions: College students tend to have different levels of cognitive, affective, and global attitude toward PA with different intensities. Interventions targeting at cognitive beliefs about PA may be more effective to change college students' attitude toward PA than targeting at feeling or emotions attached to PA.