According to Healthy People 2020, adolescents need to meet current national physical activity (PA) guidelines for aerobic PA calling for 60 minutes or more per day of at least moderate-intensity PA. However, recent data from Youth Risk Behavior Surveys report 53.5% of U.S. high school adolescence were not achieving PA for at least 60 minutes on five of the last seven days before the survey. By the end of 2018, approximately 21% of healthcare costs in the U.S. will be directed toward treating obesity and obesity-related chronic health conditions, both of which can result from inadequate PA. Targeting various psychosocial factors related to the behavior, such as adolescents’ motivation for PA, may be a necessary step toward increasing their PA.
Methods:
This presentation will provide an analysis of the concept of motivation related to adolescent PA using Rodger’s evolutionary method of concept analysis. A total of 1852 articles were identified. Fifty-nine articles meeting inclusion criteria were included in the review. Data were reviewed for antecedents and consequences of motivation, as well as the attributes of the concept. PubMed, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsychInfo, and Sport Discus were searched for publications from 1980 – 2018. Search terms included motivation, adolescents or teenagers or young adults and physical activity or exercise or fitness or physical exercise.
Results:
Defining attributes of motivation for PA in adolescence include: 1) motivation is on a continuum 2) motivation is dynamic, 3) the social environment can have a positive or negative impact on an adolescent’s motivation and 4) motivation can be different based on an individual’s orientation. The different types of behavioral regulation for motivation on the continuum are: intrinsic, integrated, identified, introjected, external regulation and amotivation. Autonomous motivation includes the following related behavior: intrinsic, integrated and identified. Motivation is dynamic and can be reflective or automatic. Reflective motivation which is a process involving plans and evaluation, may be aligned with sustained autonomous motivation. Automatic motivation is a process involving emotions and impulses that arise from associative learning and/or innate dispositions (e.g. habits and routines) and may be important for initiating behavior.
Autonomous motivation may be enhanced when the environment is autonomy-supportive and supports the essential antecedents of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy-supportive environments can be developed by parents, physical education teachers, or other adults and peers. Autonomy is a feeling by adolescent that they have a choice in the PA behavior they can participate in. Competence is described as a feeling by adolescents that they can interact in the PA environment in a successful way (e.g. they have the essential skills) to achieve the desired and expected outcome. Relatedness involves adolescents seeking new identifies that support their own interest and feeling like they belong with others who share in those same interests.
Autonomous motivation may also be enhanced when the environment supports the contributing antecedents of PA self-efficacy, social support for PA, and motives (e.g. seeking achievement or appearance reasons). Self-efficacy for PA, which is defined as an adolescent’s beliefs about his or her ability to participate in PA despite barriers, is a consistent predictor of PA and goes beyond competence. Social support for PA can be received from peers, parents and others and be in the form of emotional (encouragement) or instrumental (such as financial support for transportation, clothes or equipment for PA participation); social support extends beyond relatedness. Motives for PA are the reasons why adolescents choose to participate in PA and describe their goal for what they want to attain from PA participation. Studies have clustered motives into different categories: social, health, achievement, appearance, fitness, and interest/enjoyment and found that motives differ by sex and age. Motives associated with more intrinsic reasoning have been correlated with higher positive affect, satisfaction, enjoyment, vitality and effort of PA. The most frequently utilized measurement tool for motivation is the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire (BREQ-3). The items used to assess autonomous motivation focus on PA enjoyment, satisfaction, interest, and importance; and the degree that PA is perceived as being part of one’s identify.
Adolescents also have individual differences that can determine their motivation. There are three different trait-like orientations around motivation: 1) Autonomy orientation: being able to control your own environment 2) Controlled Orientation: seeing the world as controlling them and 3) Impersonal Orientation: seeing themselves as incompetent. Adolescents have varying degrees of each of these orientations and these variations impact their motivation for different behaviors.
The consequence of increased autonomous motivation for PA is increased PA. Interventions that can increase autonomous motivation to improve PA such as in physical education need to enhance the three essential antecedents of: autonomy, competence and relatedness; and also, the contributing antecedents of PA self-efficacy (ability to overcome barriers to PA), social support (emotional or instrumental), and motives for PA.
Conclusion:
This concept analysis provided a definition of autonomous motivation for PA in adolescence. Autonomous motivation is a mental force or drive that is reflected by perceived enjoyment, satisfaction and importance of and interest in PA; and perceptions that PA is part of one’s identity. Future researchers should be consistent in the use of motivation terms and clarify the type of motivation being researched. Autonomous motivation for PA in adolescence has been clarified through this concept analysis. This information may be helpful for promoting consistency across disciplines in defining and measuring the concept and increasing motivation for PA or other health-promotion behaviors of importance to nursing. Future research with adolescence is warranted to examine underlying reasons for the differences in motivation for PA that exist between males and females and by weight status and stage of development.
Increasing PA during adolescence is important for establishing continued adequate engagement in this behavior later in life. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle throughout life is important to prevent chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Leading a healthy lifestyle may also help adolescents with the development of positive relationships and contribute to emotional wellness and academic success. Adolescents who maintain healthy behaviors throughout life are more likely to make more long-term, positive contributions to society.