| The main goal of this program is to promote adoption or maintenance of physical activity by teaching safe and effective bicycling skills to motivated youth. These youth (ages latency through early adolescence) will use behavioral and experiential processes of change to increase bicycling skills and participation in bicycling as exercise. Participants voluntarily respond to recruitment in a targeted geographical area, such as near a certain school or park district facility. The goals for offering bicycling to such a group of participants are to help prevent physical and mental illness via developmentally appropriate methods. The motivational theory underlying the program is the stages and processes of change model, or Transtheoretical Model, which has been effective in understanding motivation of individuals engaging in varying degrees of physical activity. The model has been used extensively to examine how individuals decrease unhealthy activities, especially substance abuse. Regarding motivation for increasing physical activity, the program is targeted to youth who have bicycles, present voluntarily to community advertisements, and express mild to moderate levels of motivation to be more effective and active bicyclists. Participants who meet such criteria are more likely to adopt or maintain engagement in beneficial levels of physical activity. |
