Adherence to physical activity in an unsupervised setting: Explanatory variables for high attrition rates among fitness center members
Sperandei and colleagues followed the membership records of more than five thousand people who joined a gym in Rio de Janeiro over nine years, tracking each person for a year or until they cancelled. The attrition is the finding. Around two in three new members stopped attending before the third month, and fewer than one in twenty were still going after a year of continuous activity. They then modelled what predicted dropping out and found that age, how active a person had been before joining, their starting body mass index, and their stated motive all mattered, with motives around weight loss, muscle gain, health and appearance carrying different risks. The part worth quoting is the conclusion: even members with the most favourable combination of every measured factor still had a high probability of quitting within twelve months. It is an observational study of one commercial gym, so the exact figures belong to that setting, but the shape of the curve is the point. This vault cites it on why joining is not adherence.
Sperandei and colleagues followed the membership records of more than five thousand people who joined a gym in Rio de Janeiro over nine years, tracking each person for a year or until they cancelled. The attrition is the finding. Around two in three new members stopped attending before the third month, and fewer than one in twenty were still going after a year of continuous activity. They then modelled what predicted dropping out and found that age, how active a person had been before joining, their starting body mass index, and their stated motive all mattered, with motives around weight loss, muscle gain, health and appearance carrying different risks. The part worth quoting is the conclusion: even members with the most favourable combination of every measured factor still had a high probability of quitting within twelve months. It is an observational study of one commercial gym, so the exact figures belong to that setting, but the shape of the curve is the point. This vault cites it on why joining is not adherence.
Written from the abstract, Europe PMC.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Sperandei, S., Vieira, M. C. & Reis, A. C. (2016). "Adherence to physical activity in an unsupervised setting: explanatory variables for high attrition rates among fitness centre members." Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 19(11), 916-920. PubMed 26874647.
Where we use it
- Nobody Is Born Consistent, Why We Move
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The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2015.12.522
DOI: 10.1016/j.jsams.2015.12.522