The Relationship Between Physical Activity Knowledge, Exercise Behavior and Barriers in First Year College Students

Ella Fisher and Monet Kumazawa studied the relationship between students’ awareness of exercise guidelines and their own efficacy in being physically active. Studying a topic of immediate relevance to college students, their project engaged all aspects of the research process from an intensive literature review, defining their research questions, designing a data collection instrument, and then statistically analyzing their results for significance and recommendations for further study. They reported out their project with a Powerpoint slideshow and a video of their SUURA presentation. They also presented at the Northwest Student Sport and Exercise Psychology Symposium at Western Washington University in April. As their faculty member Erica Rauff (Kinesiology) comments, “Ella and Monet have both gained invaluable knowledge regarding research methods and data analysis. They were both able to take concepts previously learned in the classroom and apply it to an actual population and think critically about the implications of their findings. Their project was submitted to a regional conference and accepted as an oral presentation. They were the only undergraduate students to present at this conference, which speaks to the high quality work these students have done. I was beyond impressed with their professionalism at the conference and the students received much praise for the rigor of their work by many of the professionals at the conference.