Abstract
Studies addressing correlates of physical activity in children often fail to properly apply a behavioral theory and correctly define the behavior in terms of action, context, target and time, leading to weak relationships between the theory constructs and the behavior. PURPOSE: To correctly apply the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) to the behavior of “actively playing for 30 minutes after school, every day this week.” METHODS: A 17-item RAA survey was administered to 210 5th and 6th grade students from Central Indiana. The survey measured three items for intention (IN), the main determinant of behavior, and four to six items for each of the three global constructs underlying intention (i.e., attitude toward the act (AA), perceived norm (PN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC)) on a 5-point Likert scale. The survey was administered on Monday. Self-reported behavior (BH) was assessed by two questions on Friday during a face-to-face, semi-structured interview. Construct scores were created by calculating the mean across the items. Cronbach’s alpha measured internal consistency of the construct scores. Pearson correlations assessed the bivariate relationships. Multiple regression determined how well the three global constructs predicted IN. RESULTS: Internal consistency for construct scores questions ranged from 0.67 - 0.87. AA (r= 0.75), PN (r=0.59) and PBC (r=0.76) were highly correlated to IN at p ≤ 0.01. The three constructs significantly predicted IN (F = 160.77, p < 0.001), accounting for 70% of the variance. The strongest predictors were PBC (β = 0.548 (0.068), t = 8.113, p < 0.001) and AA (β = 0.457 (0.066), t = 6.903, p <0.001). PN was a significant predictor, but not as strong as PBC and AA (β = 0.193 (0.059), t = 3.285, p < 0.001). IN was strongly associated with BH (r = 0.598, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The size of the multiple R predicting IN and of the correlation between IN and BH demonstrate that the RAA can be used to understand the specific physical activity behavior of active play after school. The values were higher than what has been shown in the literature; perhaps due to properly applying the RAA and correctly defining the behavior. The higher weights for AA and PBC suggest that programs to increase active play should address the children’s rating of how good/bad is active play and how much active play is under their control.
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