COMBINING BEHAVIORAL AND MOTIVATIONAL DIMENSIONS TO IDENTIFY AND CHARACTERIZE THE STAGES IN THE PROCESS OF ADHERENCE TO EXERCISE

The aim of the present study was to identify and characterize the stag es in the process of adherence to exercise among a sample of 347 adult s randomly recruited from the general population. Combining a behavior al (habit of exercising in the past 3 months) and a motivational (inte ntion to exercise in the next 6 months) dimension allowed the formatio n of five stages, on a continuum varying from a sedentary stage (stage 1) to a very active stage (stage 5). The psychosocial factors studied were derived from a social cognitive theory [attitude, perceived cont rol (self-efficacy), and subjective social norms]. Subjects were visit ed at home by trained interviewers for baseline data collection and be havior was self-reported 6 months later. ANOVA indicated that there wa s a significant difference in exercising behavior between the stages ( p < .0001) and trend analysis showed this relationship to be linear (p < .001). MANOVA indicated that there was an overall significant diffe rence in the psychosocial variables between the stages (p < .0001); pa irwise comparisons identified multiple significant differences. In par ticular, perceived control (self-efficacy) was involved in every diffe rence identified between the stages, having a negative value at stage 3. The results indicated that stage 2 is a very critical stage and pro vides a possible explanation for the 50% drop-out rate from exercise p rograms typically observed during the first 3 to 6 months.