Determinants of yoga practice: An application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

Stress is becoming a chronic and pervasive issue which affects individuals at the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. College students in particular face pressures which make stress management critically important; in fact, Healthy Campus 2020 has identified managing stress as a high priority issue. Yoga is one stress management technique which has proven useful for a variety of populations.;The purpose of this study was to determine the beliefs college students have about practicing yoga regularly. With this knowledge, interventions can be formulated to increase yoga usage. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was utilized to understand attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and self-efficacy of college students toward practicing yoga regularly.;The present study involved 111 college students, mostly white (83%), female (76%) and non-yoga practitioners (75%). An instrument based on the TPB was created for this descriptive, non-experimental research. Correlation analysis and independent t-testing were utilized to understand the relationship between beliefs and intention to practice yoga.;Attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control were significantly associated with intention (p<.05). Of the three, attitude had the highest beta weight (.713), meaning it most closely predicted intention.;Specific outcomes of managing stress, feeling more relaxed, being more physically fit, increasing energy, enhancing mood, and improving flexibility were significantly higher (p<.025) for those who intended to practice yoga than for those who did not. Beliefs of women versus men were also analyzed. With regard to attitude, the mean behavioral cross-products of feeling more relaxed, feeling better, and enhancing mood were significantly higher for women than men (p<.025). For subjective norm, women reported wanting to please their mothers more than did the men (p<.05). These results have implications for increasing yoga usage in college students.