Personal Fulfillment May Motivate Adolescents To Be Physically Active

Motivation and Achievement

Adolescents are most likely to report personal fulfillment as the strongest motivation to be physically active. Personal fulfillment motivation should be considered when designing physical activity promotion programs for youth, according to a study in the December issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Ensuring that youth are physically active is essential for their physical and emotional health. But rates of physical activity are low among youth and decline during adolescence, according to background information in the article. To increase physical activity among youth, motivations to be physically active must be understood more clearly.

Katie Haverly, M.S., and Kirsten Krahnstoever Davison, Ph.D., of the State University of New York at Albany, conducted a cross-sectional study to identify factors that motivate adolescents to be physically active, and to assess the links between activity motivation and physical activity. (Ms. Haverly is now with the Department of Health Education and Health Behavior, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.) A total of 202 students (92 girls, mean age 12.5 years; and 110 boys, mean age 12.7 years) at a middle school in rural central Pennsylvania took part in the study. The researchers assessed differences in motivators for groups at risk for physical inactivity