Abstract
Less than 50% of adults aged 18-30 years report meeting the current guidelines for physical activity (PA), with the steepest declines occurring in young adulthood. Theory-based psychosocial factors have been proposed to identify possible modifiable psychological barriers to PA. Purpose: To explore the relation between PA and key psychosocial determinants: 1) motivation (MO); 2) self-ef- ficacy (SE); 3) social support (SS); 4) exercise enjoyment (EE); and 5) body image (BI) in young adult college students. A secondary aim was to examine whether young adult females and males differ in psychosocial determinants of PA. Methods: A cross-sectional correlational design was employed. Fifty-five females (18.7±0.7 yrs) and 35 males (18.5±0.6 yrs) participated. Weekly minutes of hard PA, very hard PA, and total weekly minutes of PA (7-Day PA Recall) served as the dependent variables. Determinant variables were assessed using standardized questionnaires. Results: For females, SE, EE, MO, SS from friends, and BI were correlated (p<0.05) to total weekly minutes of PA. The combination of EE, MO, SS, and BI explained nearly 43% of the variance in total weekly minutes of PA (R2=0.426, F(4,50)=9.294, p<0.001). For males, EE was correlated (p<0.05) to minutes of hard PA, minutes of very hard PA, and total weekly minutes of PA. A stepwise multiple regression analysis resulted in EE being the only determinant selected for the model (R2=0.174, F(1,33)=6.949, p=0.013). Conclusion: EE was a significant psychosocial determinant of PA among young adult male and female college students. Other psychosocial determinants of PA in females include MO, SS, and BI. These psychosocial variables deserve consideration when designing future behavioral interventions to increase PA in young adult college students.
Highlights
Considered a major public health concern, physical inactivity (PIA)J Pub Health Issue Pract Volume 1. 2017. 104 and increased body fatness are linked to metabolic risk factors and chronic disease in both men and women [1,2]
Subjects presented with primarily healthy body weight, BMI, percent body fat, and waist circumference measurements when compared to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)/American Heart Association (AHA) Guidelines [29] for young adults of the same age
Minutes of total physical activity (PA) were lower than values reported by Sallis et al (1985), for young adult males (966.0 minswk-1) and females (553.8 minswk-1) in the original 7D-PAR validation studies [27,30]
Summary
Considered a major public health concern, physical inactivity (PIA)J Pub Health Issue Pract Volume 1. 2017. 104 and increased body fatness are linked to metabolic risk factors and chronic disease in both men and women [1,2]. Young adults transitioning from high school to college have consistently shown to partake in lower levels of physical activity (PA) and exhibit high rates of overweight/ obesity, undesirable total cholesterol, high blood pressure, and other coronary heart disease risk factors [3,4,5]. Despite these negative health indicators, young adults are an often-understudied population, compared to children/adolescents, middle-aged/ older adults, and other special populations. Interventions targeted towards college freshman may provide a platform to reach a relatively accessible population that is at great risk of becoming less active because of the lifestyle changes experienced during the transition from high school to college
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