Abstract
Promotion of physical activity has become a global priority for public health. While many people do not adhere to the recommendations, sport and exercise maintainers have found their right or fitting practice. Thus, assessing and knowing the participation motives across maintainers helps to improve our understanding of the sports and exercise practices and, thus, to recommend and to design physical activities and programmes that fit to individuals’ motives. A modified version of the Bernese Motive and Goal Inventory was used in an Austria-wide cross-sectional study with 10646 sport and exercise maintainers (43% female). The study performed confirmatory factor analysis, examined measurement invariance, and compared participation motives. The results showed a good model fit and measurement invariance, indicating that the inventory can be applied independently of gender, age and years of sport/exercise experiences. Motives differed among gender, age and type of sports/exercise. Therefore, these variables should be considered in tailoring sport recommendations and interventions to promote adherence. Finally, the results are discussed by using the Self-Determination Theory indicating that sport and exercise maintainers pursue predominantly motives with intrinsic goal contents.
Highlights
Promotion of physical activity behaviour, including regular sport and exercise practice, has become a global priority for health promotion and prevention [1]
A total of 47% reported that they did not participate in competitions; 8% assessed themselves at being at a beginner stage, 32% at an intermediate, 46% at an advanced and 14% at a professional/master stage
The purpose of the study was to contribute to the provision of a validated questionnaire that allows measuring motive differences among age, gender and years of sport/exercise, and to the understanding of the goal contents of sport and exercise maintainers and, of the subjective incentives of the respective sport and exercise practice
Summary
Promotion of physical activity behaviour, including regular sport and exercise practice, has become a global priority for health promotion and prevention [1]. It is crucial to improve our understanding on how to promote adoption and maintenance of physical activity [4]. The current study focuses on those who are physically active in order to learn from their successful maintenance of sport and exercise behaviour. Participation motives have been shown to be one important factor to understand physical activity behaviour [6,7,8]. Recommending the type of sport/exercise fitting to the individual motive profile may promote maintenance of physical activity; cf [9,10]. Gender and age correlate with physical activity behaviour [5,11], intention [12]
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