Correlates of daily leisure-time physical activity in a community sample: Narrow personality traits and practical barriers

The Sense of Safety and Active Leisure in Gated Enclaves: Evidence from Fuzhou University Campus

Scientific interest in how residential patterns affect both people’s subjective sense of safety and their behavior is increasing. The surge of gated communities in the world has changed the way we live to a great extent. Research on the gated development trend in postmodern cities is still limited; therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between residents’ attitudes toward gated enclaves and their sense of safety. At the same time, the relationship between a sense of security and active leisure behavior was also investigated. Using data collected from 350 college students in Fuzhou University Town, this study introduces a conceptual model to test the relationship between closed enclaves, campus security, and active leisure behavior while controlling population and community characteristics. The results of structural equation model analysis show that gated enclaves positively correlate with campus safety and positively correlate with active leisure behavior, and a safe campus positively correlates with active leisure behavior. The results of this study focus on the importance of gated enclaves as a living environment, and the discovery of functional characteristics of gated enclaves supports future interventions. In other words, when promoting active leisure behavior and increasing the sense of safety in the neighborhood environment, attention must be paid to the characteristics of these gated enclaves. In addition, the simultaneous measurement of these structures provides a dynamic observation of the existing environment, as well as information for future research and construction. Decision makers and urban planners can use these results to promote interaction and healthy behavior in the community under the multi-angle development of the existing access control, thereby improving residents’ sense of security, and increasing leisure participation.

The Influence of Physical Exercise on Adolescent Personality Traits: The Mediating Role of Peer Relationship and the Moderating Role of Parent-Child Relationship

Adolescence is the critical period of the formation for individual personality traits, which would be influenced by numerous factors such as the internal and external environment. In view of physical exercise as an important factor affecting the healthy development of adolescents, whether it would play an important role in the formation of adolescents' personality traits and how it would work deserve further investigation. Based on the Ecological Systems Theory, this study has explored the relationship between physical exercise and adolescents' personality traits, as well as the mediating effect of peer relationship and the moderating effect of parent-child relationship using 9,284 data samples. The regression results show that physical exercise has a significant positive impact on the development of personality traits such as neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Peer relationships exert the mediating effect between physical exercise and adolescents' personality traits. However, parent-child relationship only moderates the effect of physical exercise on conscientiousness and agreeableness.

Are Barriers the Same Whether I Want to Start or Maintain Exercise? A Narrative Review on Healthy Older Adults

To help older adults begin or adhere to regular physical exercise, several studies have endeavored to identify barriers to active behavior. However, there is a lack of information about barriers for active older people. In addition, most of the reviews of the literature compare only active people to inactive or sedentary people without examining in detail the barriers with respect to the degree of commitment to behavioral change. Finally, there is no consistency in the results of studies investigating the effects of barriers on the relationship between stages of change and exercise behavior. The first aim of this narrative review is to compare barriers that affect exercise stages of change from those that affect levels of exercise behavior in a healthy older population and the factors that can lead to relapse or dropout; the second aim is to identify the extent to which barriers hinder the relationships between stages of change and exercise behaviors. The results showed that barriers are well identified in sedentary people and in the first two stages of change (pre-contemplation and contemplation) compared to active seniors and other stages of change (preparation, action and maintenance). Consistency between the formulations of the different stages in comparison with the transtheoretical model and the definition of barriers and the limitations of measuring physical activity in the different studies are discussed. Finally, novel perspectives of research are proposed to address the flaws in the reviewed studies.

Who Are Our Students? Understanding Students' Personality for Refined and Targeted Physical Education. A Scoping Review

Students' personality is an essential component in order to plan and teach physical education (PE) lessons according to students' individual needs. Additionally, personality formation in general is part of the educational mandate and student personality development specifically is considered as an elementary goal of PE. Although student personality is a central topic in the PE context, the state of research, especially regarding the underlying personality understandings, is diverse and hard to capture. Therefore, this scoping review aims to (I) describe the underlying personality understandings and (II) analyze research questions and results of studies examining students' personality in PE. We conducted a scoping review. Eleven databases were chosen because of their specification within the field of education, sports and health sciences. We included references if they empirically examined students' personality in PE and were published in German or English. Twenty-four studies were included in the review. Fifteen of the included studies were cross-sectional, nine longitudinal. Regarding aim I), the underlying personality understandings were inconsistent across the studies but most of the studies followed trait theory. Considering aim II), the included studies investigated relationships between students' personality and either (a) students' achievement in PE, (b) students' psychological determinants of PE participation (e.g., motivation, anxiety), or (c) a school sports intervention. Results indicated that e.g., extraverted students tend to enjoy PE more and obtain less anxiety in PE. The review showed that students' personality in PE is empirically examined but the studies' underlying personality understandings, research questions and results are diverse. Findings highlight that PE contributes to students' personality development. Additionally, the review showed that results of personality research in PE context can be used in order to teach PE in a student-centered way (e.g., by deducing the detected relationships considering extraversion) and by this support students' lifelong physical activity. Further and targeted research in this field can help PE teachers to tailor their teaching to their students' needs. This increases the chances to achieve PE's two main goals—“educating to sports (e.g., personality-aligned lessons addressing different motives)” and “educating through sports (e.g., personality development)” in the long term.

A Data Mining Approach for Examining Predictors of Physical Activity Among Urban Older Adults

The current study applied innovative data mining techniques to a community survey dataset to develop prediction models for two aspects of physical activity (i.e., active transport and screen time) in a sample of urban, primarily Hispanic, older adults (N=2,514). Main predictors for active transport (accuracy=69.29%, precision=0.67, recall=0.69) were immigrant status, high level of anxiety, having a place for physical activity, and willingness to make time for physical activity. The main predictors for screen time (accuracy=63.13%, precision=0.60, recall=0.63) were willingness to make time for exercise, having a place for exercise, age, and availability of family support to access health information on the Internet. Data mining methods were useful to identify intervention targets and inform design of customized interventions.