Psychological dimensions supporting physical activity during the COVID-19 lockdown

Journal title PSICOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE
Author/s Christel Galvani, Ginevra Guastone, Daniela Villani, Alessandro Antonietti
Publishing Year 2023 Issue 2023/3 Language Italian
Pages 12 P. 125-136 File size 208 KB
DOI 10.3280/PDS2023-003007
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This study was conducted during the lockdown period caused by the COVID-19 virus, which resulted in a strong negative psychological impact on most people’s life. This impact had different consequences on people’s habits, including physical activity (PA), which was compromised by a lack of motivation. High levels of motivation for PA were found to be fun-damental for practicing the correct amount of exercise. The study aimed at identifying possible relationships between chronotype and self-efficacy, resilience and motivation for change in relation to physical activity during COVID-19. One hundred and fifty-nine adults were re-cruited. Four questionnaires were administered online: the Morningness-Eveningness Ques-tionnaire (MEQ) to identify the chronotype, the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) to evaluate self-efficacy, the Resilience Scale (RS-14) to categorize resilience, and the Assessing Motiva-tion for Change towards Physical Activity (MAC2R-PA) to detect the motivation for change towards physical activity. Morning-type individuals were found to have significantly higher values than evening- and intermediate-types in terms of both self-efficacy and resilience. There was a significant, high, positive correlation between self-efficacy and resilience and a positive, significant relationship was found between motivation for change towards physical activity and high resilience scores, which explained the 53% of the variance. In conclusion, the moti-vation for change related to physical activity is supported by a high level of resilience. Strengthening one’s ability to cope positively with negative events is therefore essential to keep motivation for physical activity high in times of a health emergency, which in turn seems to be essential for staying physically active.

Keywords: physical activity, chronotype, self-efficacy, resilience, motivation, COVID-19

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Christel Galvani, Ginevra Guastone, Daniela Villani, Alessandro Antonietti, Cronotipo, autoefficacia, resilienza e motivazione al cambiamento a supporto dell’attività fisica durante l’emergenza sanitaria COVID-19 in "PSICOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE" 3/2023, pp 125-136, DOI: 10.3280/PDS2023-003007