Examining reasons for participation in sport and exercise using the Physical Activity and Leisure Motivation Scale (PALMS)

The purpose of the present study was to validate the Physical Activity and Leisure\ud Motivation Scale (PALMS). This included examining the internal consistency and criterion\ud validity of the PALMS, as well as testing the proposed model of PALMS subscales in a\ud confirmatory factor analysis. This study also looked at the various reasons people nominate\ud for engaging in physical activities. A community sample of 202 volunteer participants, 120\ud males and 82 females, aged 18 to 71 years, was recruited from various organizations, clubs,\ud and leisure centres. The participants represented different forms of physical activity namely,\ud Australian Football League (AFL), gym-based exercise, tae kwon do, tennis, and yoga.\ud Results indicate that the PALMS has a robust factor structure (CMIN/DF = 2.22; NFI = 0.95;\ud CFI = 0.97; RMSEA = 0.078). The PALMS also demonstrated good internal consistency\ud with a Cronbach’s alpha (α) of 0.79. The α values for the PALMS subscales ranged from .80\ud to .99. In terms of criterion validity, Spearman’s rho (rs) indicated a strong positive\ud correlation between the REMM and the PALMS (rs = .9). The correlations between each\ud PALMS sub-scale and the corresponding sub-scale on the validated REMM were also high\ud and varied from .76 to .95