Promoting Reflexive Family Physical Activity: A test of Habit and Identity Formation

Regular physical activity (PA) has enormous health benefits. Among children and adolescents, PA protects against metabolic syndrome, low bone density, depression, and obesity, and forms the behavioral patterns necessary to foster health benefits across the life course. Unfortunately, very few Canadians engage in enough PA to reap its health benefits. There is a clear need to promote PA within the family unit yet interventions focused on the family have been scarce and have had negligible impact. My research career has focused on the theoretical underpinnings of family-level PA and the application of these factors to PA promotion. Much of the past research on family-based PA has focused on increasing the knowledge base of PA's benefits in an attempt to raise intentions to act. My research has shown that most parents already agree that regular PA is important for them and their children but have difficulty following through on supportive PA intentions. My team's ongoing and recently completed research trials have examined how to promote the factors that bind good intentions to behaviour. The primary objectives of this foundation grant will be to expand upon these prior results by promoting two potentially important factors that have not received enough research attention. One of these factors is parental support habits (trial 1) and the other is parental support identity (subsequent trial 2). The key outcome in these trials will be child PA (measured objectively through a monitoring device). My team will compare whether a habit/identity promotion program focused on parental support of PA can improve child PA beyond basic education and goal-setting over six months. Participants will be families with at least one child between 6 and 12 years old who is not active. All of this research has the potential to be directly applied to national promotion campaigns and physical activity programs for families and contribute to long-term economic health outcomes of Canadians.