Explaining Young Adolescents’ Physical Activity Decision-Making Using the Prototype Willingness Model of Health Behaviour
Background: Health guidelines suggest young people spend 60 minutes per day in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, but the proportion meeting this target falls during early adolescence, a developmental stage characterised by impulsive choices not accounted for by behavioural theories based on rational beliefs and intentions. The Prototype Willingness Model (PWM) is a dual-process account of reasoned and social reaction decision-making in which perceptions of prototypes, or social images, influence impulsive willingness to engage in behaviour. Aim: To investigate whether prototype perceptions and willingness constructs can explain variance in young adolescents’ daily physical activity (PA) over and above reasoned action variables of intention, attitudes and norms. Study 1 used focus groups to explore constructs in the PWM. Thematic analysis revealed preliminary evidence that adolescents make both reasoned and more impulsive decisions about physical activity in the presence of peers. Participants were able to describe active and inactive prototypes. Study 2 investigated how far PWM variables explain variance in objectivelymeasured daily average PA. In this prospective study, prototype perceptions and willingness explained additional variance over and above reasoned action variables. Perceived similarity to active images was a significant predictor. Study 3 used implicit association tests to measure whether unconscious bias towards, and similarity to, active and inactive prototypes explained variance in physical activity. Explicit and implicit measures were only weakly correlated, but implicit bias towards active images was stronger in older participants. Study 4 tested of the extent to which PWM variables explain variance in physical activity in large sample of young adolescents, n= 9,230. Prototype similarity predicted significant variance in activity, and variables from the PMW’s social reaction path explained 4% of variance over and above reasoned action variables. Conclusion: This thesis makes a novel contribution to the explanation of adolescent physical activity with evidence that prototype perceptions explain unique variance in daily MVPA. Interventions that target perceived similarity to active and inactive prototypes have potential to increase activity levels.
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