Group exercise membership is associated with forms of social support, exercise identity, and amount of physical activity
Golaszewski and colleagues surveyed more than five hundred adults to ask why belonging to an exercise group is associated with exercising more, testing whether the route runs through social support and through identity. They separated support into five kinds, emotional, validation, informational, practical and companionship, and modelled the paths between group membership, support, exercise identity and how much activity people reported. The results differ by sex, which is the finding worth carrying. For women, group membership was associated with more activity and with a stronger exercise identity, and belonging supplied all five kinds of support, with validation, information and companionship in turn linked to identity. For men, group membership was not associated with either more activity or a stronger identity, although belonging did supply support. In both groups, identity was strongly associated with the amount of activity reported, and more so for men. The design is cross-sectional and self-reported, so it maps associations rather than establishing what causes what.
Golaszewski and colleagues surveyed more than five hundred adults to ask why belonging to an exercise group is associated with exercising more, testing whether the route runs through social support and through identity. They separated support into five kinds, emotional, validation, informational, practical and companionship, and modelled the paths between group membership, support, exercise identity and how much activity people reported. The results differ by sex, which is the finding worth carrying. For women, group membership was associated with more activity and with a stronger exercise identity, and belonging supplied all five kinds of support, with validation, information and companionship in turn linked to identity. For men, group membership was not associated with either more activity or a stronger identity, although belonging did supply support. In both groups, identity was strongly associated with the amount of activity reported, and more so for men. The design is cross-sectional and self-reported, so it maps associations rather than establishing what causes what.
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doi:10.1080/1612197X.2021.1891121. n = 506, mean age 34.3, cross-sectional, exploratory path analysis. Membership was not significantly associated with physical activity or with exercise identity among the men.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2021.1891121
DOI: 10.1080/1612197X.2021.1891121