Association of Exercise Behavior Change and the Health Belief Model

INTRODUCTION: COVID-19 has had an immense impact. Research has documented its impact on the decrease in physical activity at a population level (Steele at al. 2021). The extent of exercise behavior change in college aged students had not been well documented. Health Belief Model (HBM) highlights how the relationship of an individual\u27s perceived susceptibility, severity, and benefits and barriers lends to the proclivity of particular behaviors (Abraham and Sheeran, 2015). This study investigated the relationship of exercise behavior change, and the HBM in college-aged individuals. The HBM model has not been used to demonstrate how Covid-19 has affected exercise behavior change, so this study is able to see on a more depth level with a gauge to see how much someone felt affected and not a general outlook on how physical activity was affected by Covid-19. METHODS: A cross-sectional design using snowball sampling through a survey was used to gather survey responses assessing demographics, HBM score, and exercise behavior change. RESULTS: Logistic regression showed that an increase in HBM score lead to statistically significant odds of having a greater change in negative exercise behavior change. (OR = 1.135, X2(1) = 4.996, p = 0.025). The relationship between HBM constructs and exercise change showed to be significant from logistic regression (p \u3c 0.001). CONCLUSION: College-aged students that had greater HBM score, signifying higher levels of perceived severity, susceptibility of infection, greater perceived barriers and lower perceived benefit to exercise, were more likely to have a decrease in exercise behavior. Barriers are shown to be highest contributor to decrease in exercise. To offset the regression of physical activity, regular information about Covid-19 would influence a higher HBM score the most