The power of motivation: Promoting physical activity among teenagers

This February Vancouverites and visitors alike will witness the best athletes in the world competing in the 2010 Winter Olympics. During the course of the games – and their careers – these athletes will undoubtedly influence young people to pursue their dreams.

Indeed, athletes, coaches and teachers can have very positive influences in motivating youth. And that process – known as transformational leadership – is the basis of MSFHR 2008 Scholar Dr. Mark Beauchamp’s research program whose goal is to promote healthy lifestyles among teenagers.

"Transformational leadership comprises four dimensions," Dr. Beauchamp, an assistant professor at UBC’s School of Human Kinetics, explains. "The first is idealized influence, which involves teaching or leading through the demonstration of personally held values and acting as effective role models. The second is inspirational motivation, which involves articulating a compelling vision of the future, and demonstrating enthusiasm and optimism about what others can accomplish. Then there is individualized consideration, and finally, intellectual stimulation – getting people to think about old problems in new ways.

A number of Olympians have achieved their goals because someone in their lives made a connection – it could be parent or a school teacher, someone who has taken a personal interest, who has inspired them."

Dr. Beauchamp and his team want to better understand and foster physical education teachers’ abilities to connect with students across the motivational continuum.  "We know that if kids are to be physically active, especially outside of school, they need to feel autonomous and self determined," Dr. Beauchamp says.

That's no easy task among students in grades eight through 10 – the team’s target audience.

"That's the toughest crowd, where you see the highest drop-out rates for leisure time physical activity, but where physical education is still mandatory. We're trying to catch these kids at that vulnerable age, to enable the teachers to better connect with those students who are motivated and more likely to drop out of sport, as well as challenging those kids who are athletically gifted."

They have already achieved some success, as demonstrated by a five-month, randomized controlled feasibility study that took place in 11 schools in Richmond and Vancouver, involving 709 students and 26 teachers. "We took pre-test measures of students' perceptions of their teachers, students' levels of motivation, and to what extent they engaged in physical activity. We then trained teachers, and tracked the students' motivational cognitions at two and four months post intervention."

Their results indicate that these transformational behaviours are predictive of positive cognitions and attitudes among adolescents towards physical activity.

"Our evidence suggests that we can support teachers to better connect with their students," Dr. Beauchamp said. "As rated by their students, teachers were found to be more transformational following an intervention, compared to the control group, and students reported being more self-determined in their motivation following an intervention.

"With the support of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, we are now implementing intervention-based research that looks at different cognitions and behaviours that could be promoted and fostered through these frameworks, as well as make use of more objective measures to see to what extent we can change adolescents’ health enhancing behaviours and for how long."

There's no doubt this strategy could be game changer, and more importantly, a win-win for adolescents and society as a whole.

Pictured above is researcher Dr. Mark Beauchamp.