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Social predictors of daily relations between college women’s physical activity intentions and behavior

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Abstract

Women perform less physical activity (PA) than men, and this gap widens during college. This study examined college women’s daily PA intentions and behavior, and whether social support or social comparison orientation (SCO) moderated the PA intention-behavior relation. College women (N = 80) completed measures of social support and SCO at baseline. For seven consecutive days, participants completed an electronic survey to assess PA intentions and wore an activity monitor to assess minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA). Results indicated that intended and performed MVPA minutes were weakly related (p = 0.17, sr = 0.16). Social support did not moderate the intention-behavior relation, but SCO did (p = 0.04, sr = 0.21). Participants with stronger (vs. weaker) SCO, particularly a tendency to compare downward (i.e., to worse-off others), showed smaller discrepancies between intended and completed MVPA. College women frequently fail to achieve PA goals, but stronger tendencies to make (downward) social comparisons may minimize this gap and be a target for intervention.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Kristen Pasko, Sabrina DiBisceglie, Zuhri Outland, Marissa DeStefano, and Nicole Plantier for their assistance with data collection.

Funding

Data collection for this study was funded by internal resources at the last author’s institution. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by T32 HL076134 (Schumacher) and K23 HL136657 (Danielle Arigo).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Miriam Hospital/Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, Providence, RI, USA

    Leah M. Schumacher

  2. Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Coco Thomas

  3. Department of Psychology, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

    M. Cole Ainsworth & Danielle Arigo

Authors
  1. Leah M. Schumacher
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  2. Coco Thomas
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  3. M. Cole Ainsworth
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  4. Danielle Arigo
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Contributions

All authors contributed to conception and design. DA and CT acquired the data. DA, CT, and LMS analyzed and interpreted the data. All authors drafted the manuscript and revised it for intellectual content. All authors approved the final version of the completed manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Leah M. Schumacher.

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Conflict of interest

Drs. Schumacher and Arigo receive funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (Schumacher: T32 HL076134; Arigo: K23 HL136657). The authors declare that they have no other conflict of interest.

Ethics approval

Approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of The University of Scranton and all study procedures adhered to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Schumacher, L.M., Thomas, C., Ainsworth, M.C. et al. Social predictors of daily relations between college women’s physical activity intentions and behavior. J Behav Med 44, 270–276 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-020-00166-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-020-00166-x

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