Effects of Social Support on Sedentary Student's Readiness to Become Physically Active

Abstract

The purpose of this study was examine the relationship between social support and sedentary students� readiness to become physically active. Readiness to exercise was measured with the URICA-E2 (University of Rhode Island Continuous Assessment Exercise 2), which groups students in different stages: precontemplation non-believers (PCN), precontemplation believers (PCB) and contemplation (C). For the purpose of this analysis, the higher they scored in the C stage the more ready they were to start exercising; in this stage participants are beginning to consider exercise. 84 completed surveys (n=84) were analyzed, where 69 are female and 15 are male. The different age groups are as follows: 46 were between 18 � 20 years old, 25 were 21 � 23 years old, and 11 were 24 � 29 years old. A pretest/posttest comparison group design was performed. Through the Chi Square analysis it was found that there was no relationship between social support and sedentary students� readiness to become physically active with an x� = 1.71, p < 0.10 . The Wilcoxon Test was performed to determine if there was a difference between the pretest and posttest results. Although there was a difference, it was not statistically significant with a w = 480, p > 0.10 for the PCN stage. A z test was performed because the eligible number of participants was higher than 50 in the PCB and C stages. The result was z = -1.38, p > 0.10 for the PCB stage and z = -0.68, p > 0.10 for the C stage.