Although the use of exercise as punishment or behavior management appears to be pervasive among coaches, teachers, and fitness professionals, this phenomenon is just beginning to be studied. Our previous study of college physical education majors found that 91% of their coaches and 43% of their physical education teachers used exercise as a form of punishment or behavior management. In the current study, we examined the coaches and teachers; our purpose was to examine their attitudes, beliefs and intentions regarding the use of exercise as a form of punishment or behavior management.
Method
After IRB approval was obtained, surveys based on the Theory of Planned Behavior were administered at a state health, physical education, recreation and dance convention; 189 individuals completed the surveys. One hundred five of the individuals were both physical education teachers and coaches, 79 were physical education teachers who were not coaches, and five were coaches who were not teachers.
Analysis/Results
Although more than 60% of the survey respondents indicated that they had used exercise as a form of punishment or behavior management in the past, as a whole, the group had relatively neutral attitudes about exercise as punishment and neutral intentions regarding future use. Those individuals who were teacher-coaches had significantly stronger intentions (p < .001) to use exercise as punishment than did those individuals who were teachers only. Those who coached high school junior varsity and college teams had stronger intentions to use exercise as punishment than did those who coached youth sport, middle school, high school, and club teams. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the applicability of the Theory of Planned Behavior in predicting the participants' intentions to use exercise as a form of punishment or behavior management. The constructs of the theory yielded a multiple R of .827, and an adjusted R2 of .679. In other words, the theory was able to predict nearly 68% of the variance in the teachers' and coaches' intentions to use exercise as punishment or behavior management.
Conclusions
The theory of planned behavior provides an effective framework for understanding the intentions, attitudes, and beliefs of teachers and coaches regarding the use of exercise as punishment or behavior management.
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