Pages 204-207 in G. Pétursdóttir et al., eds. Circumpolar Health 93. Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on Circumpolar Health, Reykjavík, Iceland, June 20-25, 1993. Arctic Medical Research. 1994;53(Suppl.2)
Department of Nursing, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland
Source
Pages 204-207 in G. Pétursdóttir et al., eds. Circumpolar Health 93. Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on Circumpolar Health, Reykjavík, Iceland, June 20-25, 1993. Arctic Medical Research. 1994;53(Suppl.2)
Regular exercise is widely recognized as an important behavior in disease prevention and health promotion, and the lack of motivation to exercise has been identified as a major barrier to its continued practice. The study focuses on the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a new instrument to measure self-determination in exercise behavior, a motivational construct derived from Deci & Ryan's Self-Determination Theory. The construct is defined as an autonomy orientation towards regular exercise behavior or the perception of regular exercise as congruent with one's needs and feelings and free from internal or external control. It was operationalized in a self-report summated Liker-type rating scale of 58 items. A bilingual development of an Icelandic and English form of the measure has been emphasized. Item generation and psychometric testing plan were guided by Gable's (1986) approach to instrument development and Nunally's (1978) Psychometric Theory. The exploratory phase included face validation and content validation by expert judges as well as pre-testing on small American and Icelandic samples. The psychometric study was done on a sample of Icelandic adults (N=260) and included reliability testing and construct validation using factor analysis, "the known groups approach,? and convergent validation with Cox's Health Self-Determinism Index. Findings support the new measure as an internally consistent (Alpha=90) and valid measure of exercise motivation which may be useful in evaluating the effectiveness of health education directed at positively influencing exercise motivation.