Underserved Adolescent Girls ’ Physical Activity Intentions and Behaviors: Relationships with the Motivational Climate and Perceived Competence in Physical Education

Copyright © 2013 Alex C. Garn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This study investigated underserved adolescent girls ’ perceptions of the motivational climate in relation-ship to their perceptions of competence in urban physical education, self-reported physical activity, and future physical activity intentions. A total of two-hundred-seventy-six underserved (i.e., minority, urban, high poverty) adolescent girls completed questionnaires and a multi-step approach was used to test these relationships. First, a trichotomous model of the perceived motivational climate was tested using confir-matory factor analysis and results suggested a good fit of the data. Structural equation modeling analyses were then used to test both direct and indirect relationships between the perceived motivational climates in physical education, perceived competence in physical education, and physical activity outcomes. Find-ings revealed that the relationship between the perceived motivational climates and physical activity out-comes were best understood when perceived competence in physical education was accounted for as an intermediary factor