Research findings indicate that role identities may be important in understanding health behaviors such as exercise because identities motivate behavior consistent with the identity salience. To that end, this investigation examined the stability of exercise identity scores over 12 weeks among members of a rural fitness center
Method
Two waves of data collection separated by 12 weeks were performed with members of a fitness center. Attrition rate was 21% resulting in a final sample of 89 participants. Ninety-five per cent of the participants self-identified as Caucasian and 75% were female. Average age was 52 years with a range of 20 to 81 years. Exercise identity was measured by the sum of nine Likert-type items (Anderson & Cychosz, 1994) designed to measure the extent to which exercise was descriptive of the concept of self. Cronbach's alpha coefficients were (.93; .94).
Analysis/Results
An ANOVA was performed comparing respondents which dropped out with participants that completed both surveys with the dependent variable of initial exercise identity score. Significant group differences were displayed (F(1,109)=7.12, p=.009). The mean value for dropouts was significantly lower (39.33) than the mean value (46.91) for participants retained. However, even the mean for dropouts was above the middle score possible and appears higher that mean scores for nonexercisers reported in other research. An ANOVA with repeated measures where time and gender were independent variables and exercise identity score was the dependent variable revealed no significant results.
Conclusions
It is important to note that at the time of the initial survey, 75% of the participants indicated that they were in the maintenance stage of exercise, meaning they were exercising regularly and had been for longer than six months. Another 14% indicated they were in the action stage of exercise, as they were currently exercising regularly but only had begun doing so within the last six months. Initial mean value for exercise identity score (46.91) was within the range of mean scores for regular exercisers reported in other research. With these participants at a rural fitness center, these results indicate that the salience of their exercise identity was relatively stable over a twelve week period.
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