Background/Purpose Efforts abound to try to understand, predict, and promote increased physical activity during children's discretionary time.. No existing research to date has examined the social psychological mechanisms underlying children's choices regarding engagement in physical activity during recess. Self-Determination Theory (SDT: Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000) suggests that motives for participation are connected to the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Grounded in SDT, the purpose of this study was to explore the nature of children's attraction to need satisfaction based “ideas” for recess physical activity.
Method Fifth grade children (N=37; 22 females, 15 males) participated in individual interviews where they were presented with three recess physical activity “ideas”, each of which was theoretically based on satisfaction of one basic psychological need (e.g., “Would you see how many times you and someone else could bump a beach ball back and forth in the air?”; relatedness). Children were then asked whether or not they would choose to try each activity and why, as well as share their own ideas for recess physical activity.
Analysis/Results Standard deductive and inductive content analyses revealed that varying levels of autonomy, competence and relatedness need satisfaction were identified in relation to children's motivation to try the recess physical activity ideas. Fun, fitness/exercise, and sport skill building emerged as additional themes linked to why children would try the “recess ideas”.
Conclusions Findings support the tenets of SDT and provide important information for the design of future interventions to increase children's recess physical activity.
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