[Predictors of regular physical activity in participants in a Canadian health promotion program]

A series of predisposing and facilitating factors were examined to determine their contribution to the adoption of regular physical activity. The original longitudinal study Healthstyles was a comparative, before and after design, in which the participants (N = 640) were involved for 18 months in a multibehaviour health promotion program. The theoretical framework of Green, Kreuter, Deeps, and Partridge (1980) used for this study, the PRECEDE Model, reveals the role of three categories of factors at different levels of influence. In a correlational study, the sedentary subjects (N = 377) of a secondary analysis of data, were classified at the end of the program according to two behavioral status: adoption or non-adoption of regular physical activity. The nature of the study, the results of the preliminary analysis and the testing of the hypothesis, required a multivariate analysis approach. The logistic regression technique was used to differentiate between the adopters and the non-adopters. The results regarding the role of the combined predisposing and facilitating factors, show that only some of the predisposing factors predicts the adoption of regular physical activity. The adopters are relatively younger (OR = 0.48) males (OR = 1.7) with good or excellent self-evaluated health (OR = 0.51) and with a high score at the onset of the program, on the internal locus of control scale (OR = 1.8). Moreover, they are not different from the non-adopters in their need for external support in the change process. The impact of these results has been examined in terms of target groups and of content and approaches for future health promotion programs and research.