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Guided goal setting: effectiveness in a dietary and physical activity intervention with low-income adolescents
Mical Kay Shilts1, Marcel Horowitz, Marilyn S Townsend
1Family and Consumer Sciences Department, California State University Sacramento, Sacramento, California USA.
Objective:
Determining the effectiveness of the guided goal setting strategy on changing adolescents' dietary and physical activity self-efficacy and behaviors.
Design:
Adolescents were individually assigned to treatment (intervention with guided goal setting) or control conditions (intervention without guided goal setting) with data collected before and after the education intervention.
Setting:
Urban middle school in a low-income community in Central California.
Participants:
Ethnically diverse middle school students (n = 94, 55% male) who were participants of a USDA nutrition education program.
Intervention:
Driven by the Social Cognitive Theory, the intervention targeted dietary and physical activity behaviors of adolescents.
Main Outcome Measures:
Dietary self-efficacy and behavior; physical activity self-efficacy and behavior; goal effort and spontaneous goal setting.
Analysis:
ANCOVA and path analysis were performed using the full sample and a sub-sample informed by Locke's recommendations (accounting for goal effort and spontaneous goal setting).
Results:
No significant differences were found between groups using the full sample. Using the sub-sample, greater gains in dietary behavior (p < .05), physical activity behavior (p < .05), and physical activity self-efficacy (p < .05) were made by treatment participants compared to control participants. Change in physical activity behaviors was mediated by self-efficacy.
Conclusions And Implications:
Accounting for goal effort and spontaneous goal setting, this study provides some evidence that the use of guided goal setting with adolescents may be a viable strategy to promote dietary and physical activity behavior change.
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