Relationship between exercise motivation and characteristics of exercise behavior among college students

Objective To provide a theoretical basis for cultivating exercise behavior by fostering and inspiring exercise motivation among college students.Methods A total of 1 165 college students from one university in Yangzhou were assessed by Physical Activity Rate Scale and The Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire-version 2 (BREQ-2).Results For male students,three domains of behavioral scores were higher than that of female students(P<0.01),while introjected regulation (1.72± 1.16) was significantly lower than that of female students (1.96± 1.09).All the three domain of exercise behavior (frequency,intensity,and duration) correlated with exercise regulations such as intrinsic (r=0.21-0.33,P<0.01),integrated(r=0.21-0.43),identified(r=0.22-0.42) and interjected regulations(r=0.13-0.26).There was a negative correlation between motivation and exercise frequency (r=-0.21,P<0.05) in male students and a negative correlation between motivation and extrinsic regulation(r=-0.15,P<0.05) and exercise duration (r=-0.12,P<0.01) in female students.Integrated (male β=0.21,P<0.01;female β=0.39,P<0.01) and identified regulation (male β=0.26,P<0.01;female β=0.19,P<0.01) appeared to be an important predictor of exercise frequency for males and females.Integrated regulation was the only predictor of c exercise duration (male β=0.16,P<0.05;female β=0.21,P<0.01).Interjected regulation predicted exercise intensity for females only(β=0.12,P<0.05).Conclusion There are gender difference in college students' exercise behavior,introjected regulation and motivation.These findings suggest that exercise regulations that vary in their degree of internalization can differentially predict characteristics of exercise behavior.