Assessing the Motivation of First-year Undergraduate Students for Physical Fitness Workout and Contextual Differences at Bahir Dar University

Abstract

Motivation can be seen as a major factor in improving physical exercise behavior among people. Evaluating the motivational of university students towards physical fitness workout is important to implement intervention strategies’ to increase their motivationlevel for their personal development and achievement of individual goals.This study aimed to assess university first-year undergraduate students' motivations for engaging in physical fitness workout and how those motivations related to contextual factors. The study used a cross-sectional survey design consisted of 323 sample students at Bahir Dar University. The majority age of the students (n= 216, 66.9%) were 20 years old. The adapted Exercise Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-E) was used to measure the motivation for physical fitness workout.  The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t tests. The results show that overall mean of students’ motivation for physical fitness workout was below the average (2.85). The mean scores of most few motivational variables show significant statistical difference across the students religion, and residential status (p<.05).As far as major field was concerned, there was a statistically significant difference between natural and social science students in the two motivational variables: identified regulation and external motivation (p<.05,Cohen's d= -.123 & -.027). To understand the motivation of freshman students for physical fitness workout in universities, future research needs to consider the direct effect of some other contextual variables.