Psychological Correlates of Self-Reported and Objectively Measured Physical Activity among Chinese Children—Psychological Correlates of PA

Jing-Jing Wang, Tom Baranowski, Patrick W. C. Lau, Tzu-An Chen and Shu-Ge Zhang
Additional contact information
Jing-Jing Wang: Department of Physical Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China
Tom Baranowski: Children’s Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Balor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA
Patrick W. C. Lau: Department of Physical Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China
Tzu-An Chen: Center for Translational Injury Research, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA
Shu-Ge Zhang: Department of Physical Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China

IJERPH, 2016, vol. 13, issue 10, 1-12

Abstract: This study aimed to explore the associations among psychological correlates and physical activity (PA) in Chinese children and to further examine whether these associations varied by different PA measures. PA self-efficacy, motivation, and preference were reported in 449 8–13-year-old Chinese children (252 males). Moderate- to vigorous- intensity PA (MVPA) was measured by the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children (PAQ-C) and with an ActiGraph GT3X accelerometer. Correlations and hierarchical regressions were performed to explore their associations. The study psychological variables were all positively related to PAQ-C and objective MVPA ( r : 0.22–0.63). The associations with PAQ-C were all substantially stronger than those with accelerometry. Beyond the explained variance accounted for by demographics and social desirability, the addition of the psychological correlates accounted for 45% of the variance of the PAQ-C score, while only 13% for accelerometry-based MVPA. The associations of specific variables with the PAQ-C score (age, PA self-efficacy, autonomous motivation and preference) were somewhat different from those associated with objective MVPA (PA self-efficacy, autonomous motivation, and negatively associated with female gender). This study demonstrated the importance of self-efficacy and autonomous motivation in association with PA and indicated the difference in level of their associations with different PA measures.

Keywords: psychological correlates; accelerometry; self-report; physical activity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/10/1006/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/10/1006/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:13:y:2016:i:10:p:1006-:d:80459

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().