Abstract:

Habits, whether they are healthy or toxic, are an undisputable component of modern’s human personality and from a socio-psychological perspective represent the appropriated repetitive response to a situation or stimuli of the environment in which we activate. We cannot overlook the importance of having healthy habits in our lives, philosophers resuming this in the simplest way possible by establishing an interdependency between thoughts, words, action, habits, character and destiny.

Evolution brought changes to the way we live and if in hunting or agricultural societies a good physical condition was mandatory, in industrial and post-industrial ones it become optional. Trading physical activity to a stationary position in front of a machinery or PC came with its downsides and we are starting to experience its effects.

The present research proposes to analyse the dynamics of habits regarding physical exercises during the COVID-19 pandemic, for a group of 74 students that were monitored for a period of 93 days that stretched across three different moments in a student’s life: courses period, winter holidays and exams period (09.11.2020 - 09.02.2021). The data comes from a broader study which aimed to identify and test a viable solution for teaching online physical education courses. The original 12 item Self-reported Habit Index (SRHI) with a five-point scale was administered at the beginning and at the end of the period. The subject’s physical activity was monitored daily for the whole period with the help of a log that contained data regarding the type, duration and intensity of the physical activity done. This will help us to not only to test if the habit of doing physical activities modified, but also to identify what exactly contributed to this.

Data processing will be done by firstly creating individual profiles for the whole group of study taking into consideration the values obtained for the initial & final SRHI. The number of days logged, number of hours and intensity felt will be added to each profile. Once the database is created, we will employ bivariate logistic models to identify the factors that influenced habit shifting dynamic.

Keywords:

Habit, physical exercises, pandemic.