A Descriptive Study of First Two-Year Students' Physical Activity Belief

Background/Purpose: Although efforts have been made for decades to promote physical activity (PA) among college students, few studies have reported significant long-term behavioral change. There are multiple motives for engaging in PA and belief about consequences of regular participation is one possible reason for an individual to initiate a behavioral change. Students’ belief about PA may be influenced by multiple aspects in their life contexts. The aim of the study was to examine first two year college students’ PA belief by different gender, race, major and previous sport participation.

Method: Freshmen and sophomores (n=374) participated in the study with 52.7% males. Student major was coded into natural science, social science, undecided, and kinesiology and health promotion. Race was categorized as White, Latino, Asian and African American. Sport history was coded into two groups as “played sport in high school” and “Didn’t play sport in high school”. Belief was measured using a pre-validated questionnaire with 16 items on a 5-point Likert scale.

Analysis/Results: A four-way (i.e., gender, race, major, and sport history) ANOVA was performed for data analysis and suggested significant difference by gender and sport history with no interaction effect. It was suggested that students with sport history in high school had significant better belief (p< .01). Female students had higher beliefs than males (p< .05). Students in kinesiology major had the highest score in PA belief than all the others majors, even though the result was not statistically significant. All races reported similar scores on their belief about PA . 

Conclusions: The data from the study suggested that females and students with sport participation history in high school had sufficient more positive attitudes toward PA and believed that regular PA was beneficial. Future research is needed to examine why male students had less positive PA beliefs than their female counterparts and what role of PA beliefs plays in their PA engagement.