Stages Of Change In Physical Activity And Its Psychosocial Variables Among A Mongolia Adult Sample

―The Four Steps from Inactivity to Activity (FIT) Model‖, which is proposed byexercise psychologists from Germany and China, is a stage model to understand adults’physical activity behavioral change. This study preliminarily tests the FIT model byexamining the relationship between stages of change in physical activity and psychosocialvariables among a sample of Inner Mongolian adults.《Physical ActivityBehaviorQuestionnaireforAdults》,whichhadbeen translated intoInner Mongolia language with good reliability and validity, was used as the measure in thisstudy.657adults from Tongliao City、Xilin Gol League and Hulun Buir League finished thequestionnaires, aging from27to55years old（M=37.87，SD=7.19）.There were342men(52.1%) and315women (47.9%).42.6%of the participants (n=280) possessed―high schoolgraduated or below‖educational background, the rest57.4%(n=377) were―college or above‖.Besides, annual household income of405(61.6%) participants was lower than50,000and252(38.4%) was higher than50,000. In addition, ten psychosocial variables from personaland enviormental aspects were investigated including Subjective barriers, Self Efficacy,Outcome Expectation, Body Concept, Activity Plan, Affective Attitude, Intrinsic Motivation;Important Assessment on Circumstance, Emotion and Social Support, The statistical methodsconsisted of Chi-square analyses, T test, analyses of variance, post-hoc tests (Duncan test),and simple effect analysis.The study results showed that:1) The stages distribution of the sample was―Not-considering‖(12.5%),―Considering‖(27.1%),―Preparing‖(8.1%),―Exploring‖(20.8%),―Fluctuating‖(16.4%), and―Maintaining‖(15.1%).2)According to the general internationalrecommendation for Health Enhancing Physical Activity (HEPA),the energy consumption ofadults should be at least800kcal/week. In this study, Participants who were in inactive stagesdidn’t reach the recommendation for HEPA, and there were not significant differences amongthem but the energy consumption of participants who were in active stages was significanthigher than800kcal. Moreover, there were significant differences among three active stages interms of energy consumption.3) The10psychosocial variables involved were significantcorrelated to stages. All variables except Assessment on circumstance importance showeddifferences across6different stages.4) Except for financial situation, all demographicvariables including gender, ages and educationcan moderate the relationship betweenpsychological variables and stages of change.Conclusion: The FIT Model can preliminarily describe the stages of change in physical activity for Inner Mongolia adults and the relationship between the stages and psychosocialvariables. The validity of stage algorithm in FIT model was also proved, which providedtheoretical and empirical evidence for stage-matched intervention among Mongolia adults infuture.