Abstract:

Physical activity (PA) is critical to a healthy lifestyle, however, when students transition from high school into university, PA tends to drop, especially among women, whose PA has been reported to drop to less than 50%. Furthermore, it has been argued that not all goals are created equal, and that the content of each goal has an important bearing on its quality and its consequent favourable or adverse outcomes. In other words, one same PA-associated goal (i.e. going to the gym, or playing soccer) may rest on a variety of different types of goal contents (for instance, intrinsic or extrinsic goal contents), thus, producing distinct experiences in accordance. Such distinct goal contents have been studied, including, skill development, affiliation, health, recognition, and appearance.

Based on the aforementioned antecedents, the present study assessed the percentage of health-care university students (future nurses and psychologists; nnur = 243; npsy = 151) who worked aside of their studies (and how many hours a week they worked); the percentage who practised PA (and what activities they practised); the percentage of women students in these Bachelors (BA); and the goal contents that drove their PA (skill development, affiliation, health, recognition, and appearance). We assessed the relationships between time investment; goal contents; and psychological need satisfaction (PNS) of the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness in PA.

As expected given antecedents, percentage of women was high in nursing (89%) and psychology (87%). Among nurses, 47% also worked, among psychologists, 30%. Notwithstanding antecedents among general student population of the same university, PA practice percentage was 64% among nurses, and 68% among psychologists. The most practiced PA activities were gymnastics (moderate and intense), body building, activities with music, and running. Following these, basketball (12), volleyball (7), soccer (7), padel (6), and hockey (5) were among the most frequently reported sports activities that included group participation. Regarding goal contents for PA the highest valued goal was health, followed by appearance and skill development, and lastly affiliation and recognition. Furthermore, as regards the associations between goal contents and PNS; skill development was positively related with all three psychological needs; affiliation, positively with relatedness and competence (but not autonomy); health positively with autonomy and competence (but not relatedness); recognition negatively with autonomy; and appearance negatively with relatedness. Minutes of weekly PA practised was positively associated with competence and relatedness need satisfaction; and with skill development, affiliation and recognition goal contents.

Goal contents (and not only goals) are indispensable in understanding the PA experience of health-care university students thoroughly. High value ascribed to health goal content is consistent with the type of BA, resulting in high participation rates, even in women who had showed lesser participation in other BAs. Not all goals are made equal: recognition and appearance goals negatively correlated with autonomy and relatedness needs, respectively, thus suggesting their lower quality as goals for PA. These findings suggest that universities promoting PA among their students would be well advised to consider goal contents and activity formats in their promotion strategies.

Keywords:

Gender, university students, physical activity, goal contents, nursing, social psychology.