Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis study aimed to further the understanding of physical activity participation for mothers of young children by exploring their decisional balance toward exercise, decreasing their temptation not to exercise, increasing their self-efficacy towards exercise, and increasing their intention to exercise. The two control groups included a traditional group, whose participants attended an aerobics class taught at a fitness club, and an individual group, whose participants exercised on their own. Participants in the power with-in (PWI) group followed a stage-targeted personalized intervention that combined constructs from the transtheoretical model (TTM) and theory of planned behavior model (TPB). The PWI group included a personalized exercise program, DVD, private website, life coaching, and instruction in order to promote change. Participants were mothers (N = 36) aged 21 to 50 with young children between the ages of infancy and 17 years. All groups completed 6 weeks of exercise logs, eight pretest questionnaires, and seven posttest questionnaires. There was no significance indicated by a 2 x 2 ANOVA for all three groups (p ? .05). Other repeated measures yielded no significance. The collective pretests and posttests for all three groups over the 6-week intervention proved to have no significance in increasing decisional balance toward exercise, decreasing temptation not to exercise, and increasing self-efficacy towards exercise and intention to exercise. If the power were higher, the outcome of the study may have been more successful