Child-parent reciprocal influences in exercise behavior.

Promotion of physical activity has received much attention in national health objectives. Family concordance in the performance of health behaviors, including exercise, has been a consistent research finding, but the processes that result in these similarities have not been fully examined. The primary purpose of this study, therefore, was to investigate parents' perceptions of their pre-adolescent/adolescent children's influence on their patterns of physical activity. A second purpose was to explore the importance of these perceptions in predicting parental exercise behavior. An adaptation of the Health Promotion Model (Pender, 1982; 1987; 1996) guided the study. A sample of 184 parents of children who had participated in a school-based study of exercise beliefs and habits responded to mailed surveys that explored beliefs in the benefits of and barriers to exercise, exercise self-efficacy, family flexibility, cohesion, and structure, perceptions of social support, modeling, norms and persuasion efforts offered by their children, and the nature and frequency of their own exercise. Descriptive results revealed no significant differences between mothers and fathers in the responses to the support, modeling, norms and persuasion (influence) items. Parents of boys reported efforts to exercise with the parent more frequently than was reported by the parents of girls; however, parents also reported of exercise efforts more frequently from sons than was reported for daughters. No group differences in perceptions of influence were found between African-American and Caucasian parents, one- and two-parent families, high and low flexibility and cohesion families, parents of preadolescents and adolescents, or those with one, two, or more children. The sample of fathers was too small to allow testing of the ability of the cognitions and interpersonal influences to predict behavior, but structural equation modeling with mothers' data revealed that the cognitions and influence variables accounted for 12% of the variance in their exercise frequency, while family variables were unrelated. Family variables were, however, associated with children's perceptions of social support from mothers for exercise, and with children's exercise frequency. It is recommended that subsequent investigations of family health behaviors should include examination of child to parent influence as a determinant of the behavior.PhDBehavioral psychologyEducationHealth and Environmental SciencesHealth educationNursingPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130928/2/9825192.pd