Determinants for elderly exercise intentions : a comparative study between exergame and traditional exercise.

• Main Author: Wu, Zumei.
• Other Authors: Theng Yin Leng
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Communication
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/51326
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The health concern of a rapidly ageing population is one of the most critical challenges faced by many countries globally. While the elderly understand the health benefits of exercise, the majority of them are sedentary and reluctant to exercise. Understanding factors that affect engaging the elderly in exercise would be helpful for individuals, communities and policy makers in exercise planning and promotion. Through an extensive literature review, it was shown that enjoyment, social interaction and perceived behavioural control are considered as important determinants influencing elderly exercise participation, while social presence could be used to illustrate social interactions level during the exercise process. Hence, the study aimed at investigating the effects of enjoyment, social presence and perceived behavioural control. Different exercise settings (traditional exercise vs. exergame) and player interaction patterns (collaborative play vs. competitive play) were proposed as experimental conditions. A 2 X 2 between-subject factorial experiment was conducted for older adult participants aged 55 and above. Participants were divided into four groups and required to attend the interventions for 4 weeks, with 2 sessions per week: 1) traditional exercise group with collaborative play; 2) traditional exercise group with competitive play; 3) exergame group with collaborative play; and 4) exergame group with competitive play. An interviewer-administered questionnaire survey was conducted among all participants before and after the intervention. A total of 113 older adults took part in this study, but 18 cases were dropped due to incomplete data or outliers, leaving 95 cases for analysis. SPSS and AMOS were applied to analyse the data. Findings revealed that exercise settings influenced social presence, while player interaction patterns affected perceived behavioural control. Both perceived behavioural control and social presence predicted general exercise intention, but only perceived behavioural control predicted specific group exercise intention. Both exercise settings and player interaction patterns had an influence on specific group exercise intention, but only player interaction patterns affected general exercise intention. In contrast to previous findings, enjoyment failed to be significant in most of the associated paths, except for perceived behavioural control.Further analysis also showed that attention should be given to increasing social presence and perceived behavioural control in elderly exercise promotion and exergame design. This study could be extended to other exercise types, or other countries, to explore determinants for elderly exercise intentions and subsequent behaviours.