Psychosocial Factors Influencing Intentions to Exercise of Young Students from Grades 7 to 9

Abstract

Our main purpose was to examine the influence of personal attributes and family environment upon the exercise intentions of students in grades 7 to 9. Fishbein's (1967) psychosocial model was applied. This predicts intentions from attitudes and subjective norms. The subjects were 698 students of both sexes attending grades 7 to 9 at two junior high schools in Metro Toronto. The results do not fully support Fishbein's concepts that external variables increase the prediction of exercise intentions relative to variables normally included in his model. Attitudes, current physical activity habits, and prior experience of exercise all contributed significantly to explaining the variance in exercise intentions. Nevertheless, over 50% of the total variance in exercise intentions remained unexplained. Since more variance of exercise intentions could be explained in students who had personal experience of physical activity early in childhood, our results support the value of early socialization towards physical activity.