Background/Purpose: Given the fact that youth physical inactivity is a public health burden, it is imperative to understand multilevel factors of youth physical activity (PA) to design effective PA interventions aimed at promoting youth PA (USDHHS, 2008). Social support has been identified as an important influence on youth PA, but researchers have not investigated different types of social support (i.e., social provisions, including reliable alliance, attachment, guidance, nurturance, social integration, and reassurance of worth) on PA in middle school students. Guided by the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2001; Glanz et al., 2008), the main purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive strengths of individual and different types of social support toward students' PA.
Method: Participants were 752 students (382 boys, 370 girls; M age = 12.4 years) from two suburban middle schools. They completed previously validated surveys assessing their perceptions of enjoyment, PA self-efficacy, social provisions (6 subscales), and self-reported PA.
Analysis/Results: Correlation analyses revealed that all variables were significantly related to one another (r's ranging from .18 to .60, p <.01). Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that enjoyment, self-efficacy, nurturance, reassurance of worth (β = .12, .31, .18, .20, respectively, all p < .01) were positive predictors of self-reported PA, explaining 28.8 % of the variance.
Conclusions: These findings provide empirical evidence about relationships among multilevel social cognitive variables and students' PA behaviors. The results highlight the importance of providing different types of social support in order to promote students' PA in addition to individual factors.