Abstract

Motives for physical activity may vary considerably by age, sex, and the level of physical activity. We aimed to examine motives for physical activity in older men and women with different physical activity levels as well as whether genetic and/or environmental factors explain those motives. Finnish twins (mean age 72.9years, 262 full twin pairs) self-reported their motives for physical activity. Time spent on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity was monitored using a hip-worn accelerometer. Comparisons between the different physical activity groups of older twins (n=764-791/motive dimension) were analyzed using the Wald test, and effect sizes were calculated as Cohen's d. Quantitative genetic modeling was used to estimate genetic and environmental contributions. For both sexes, the most frequently reported motives for physical activity were physical fitness, health maintenance, and psychological well-being. Conforming to others' expectations was more important for men than for women (P<.001, Cohen's d=0.38), while appearance (P=.001 Cohen's d=-0.24) and psychological well-being (P=.02, Cohen's d=-0.17) were highlighted by women. Most of the motive dimensions differed significantly between the physically active and inactive individuals. It was estimated that 5%-42% of the variation in motives was contributed by genetic factors and 58%-95% by environmental factors. The result that environmental factors contribute in a great deal to motives indicates that interventions to motivate physically inactive older individuals to be physically active can be successful. However, personalized interventions are needed because sex and the level of physical activity were found to be associated with older individuals' motives for physical activity.

Highlights

  • Motives for physical activity have been reported to be a crucial factor to understand individual differences in physical activity behavior.[1,2,3] Because the level of physical activity tends to progressively decrease with age[4] and because the proportion of the world's population over 60 years old will almost double within the decades,[5] an increasing interest has arisen in investigating the motives for physical activity in the elderly population

  • The Wald test was used to assess whether motives for physical activity significantly differed between the quintiles of accelerometer-measured time spent on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity

  • Based on the survey questions, a relatively higher amount of men than women reported engaging in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (20% vs 17%, P < .001), which is in line with the accelerometer data

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Summary

Introduction

Motives for physical activity have been reported to be a crucial factor to understand individual differences in physical activity behavior.[1,2,3] Because the level of physical activity tends to progressively decrease with age[4] and because the proportion of the world's population over 60 years old will almost double within the decades,[5] an increasing interest has arisen in investigating the motives for physical activity in the elderly population. It has been shown that older individuals are motivated by many general factors, such as health,[6] but motivational factors have been revealed to vary with age.[7,8]. Two systematic reviews have evaluated motives for physical activity in old individuals, but they did not include meta-analyses to estimate pooled effect sizes.[9,10] Baert at al. Some of the motives found in this review were very general to all people for being physically active, such as psychological health benefits and social connection with others, while some motives were more specific to older individuals, such as improving the ability to complete daily activities and reducing the risk/fear of falling

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