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Momentary assessment of physical activity intention-behavior coupling in adults

  • Original Research
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Translational Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Research attempting to elucidate physical activity (PA) intention-behavior relations has focused on differences in long-term behavior forecasting between people. However, regular PA requires a repeated performance on a daily or within-daily basis. An empirical case study application is presented using intensive longitudinal data from a study of PA in adults to (a) describe the extent to which short-term intention-behavior coupling occurs and (b) explore time-varying predictors of intention formation and short-term intention-behavior coupling. Adults (n = 116) participated in three 4-day waves of ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Each day, participants received EMA questionnaires assessing short-term PA intentions and wore accelerometers to assess whether they engaged in ≥10 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in the 3-hour period after each EMA prompt. Concurrent affective states and contexts were also assessed through EMA. Participants reported having short-term intentions to engage in PA in 41% of EMA prompts. However, participants only engaged in ≥10 min of MVPA following 16% of the prompts that short-term PA intentions were reported indicating an intention-behavior gap of 84%. Odds of intentions followed by PA were greater on occasions when individuals reported higher levels of positive affect than was typical for them. This study is the first to take an EMA approach to describe short-term intention-behavior coupling in adults. Results suggest that adults have difficulty translating intentions into behavior at the momentary level, more so than over longer timescales, and that positive affect may be a key to successfully translating intentions into behavior.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Jaclyn P. Maher Ph.D., Eldin Dzubur M.S., Jimi Huh Ph.D. & Genevieve F. Dunton Ph.D., M.P.H

  2. School of Exercise Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Ryan E. Rhodes Ph.D.

  3. Department of Health Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Stephen Intille Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Jaclyn P. Maher Ph.D.
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  2. Ryan E. Rhodes Ph.D.
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  3. Eldin Dzubur M.S.
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  4. Jimi Huh Ph.D.
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  5. Stephen Intille Ph.D.
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  6. Genevieve F. Dunton Ph.D., M.P.H
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jaclyn P. Maher Ph.D..

Ethics declarations

This work has been submitted solely to TBM and has not been previously published, either in part or in whole, and the findings have not been posted online. The corresponding author has had access to all aspects of the research and writing process and assumes complete responsibility for the paper. All authors have control of the primary data and agree to allow the journal to review the data if requested. All authors agree with the form and content of the submitted manuscript and the ordering of the authorship. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Southern California and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Funding

This research was supported by the American Cancer Society 118283-MRSGT-10-012-01-CPPB (Dunton, PI).

Additional information

Implications

Researchers: While time-varying factors such as affect and time of day contribute to short-term physical activity intention-behavior coupling, more research is needed to explore other time-varying factors including characteristics of the physical environment and self-regulation.

Practitioners: Healthcare providers should recognize that intentions will not always translate into behavior depending on the current context and encourage patients to study and recognize the contexts that are most conducive to following through with short-term physical activity intentions.

Policymakers: Resources should be directed towards novel methodological approaches designed to better understand the processes influencing health behaviors in the context of everyday life.

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Maher, J.P., Rhodes, R.E., Dzubur, E. et al. Momentary assessment of physical activity intention-behavior coupling in adults. Behav. Med. Pract. Policy Res. 7, 709–718 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-017-0472-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-017-0472-6

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