Mechanisms of exercise maintenance: Cancer prevention in healthy older women

描述（由申请人提供）：绝大多数美国人没有进行足够的体育活动（PA）， 45岁或以上的女性的参与率尤其低。定期PA与降低乳腺癌风险之间的联系已经得到了很好的证实，一些估计表明，与不运动的女性相比，经常运动的女性患乳腺癌的可能性可能要低80%。出于这个原因，有很大的公共卫生动机来提高中年妇女的PA率。如何最好地激励私人助理的行为是一个需要更具体理论框架的研究领域。在包括临床、社会和健康在内的几个广泛的心理学领域进行的研究一致表明，自我监控是一种有效的干预措施，可以增加对健康行为（即PA）的参与。关于PA体验的哪些方面可能对自我监控最有用，最近的研究表明，在中年女性人群中，增加对PA对日常生活的直接好处的认识（即，影响改善）可能很重要。随着时间的推移，PA-affect的关系可能是一个特别相关的焦点，因为在运动期间和之后，更有利的影响与随后更大的PA意图和更频繁的运动行为有关。过去研究pa -情感关系的工作的一个关键限制是固有的无法使用实验设计来研究这种关系。提出的研究的一个具体目的是解决这一差距在文献。虽然不可能随机分配个体对PA产生预先指定的情感反应，但可以通过使用自我监控随机分配个体参加PA体验的预先指定方面。具体来说，这项研究将分配40-60岁的女性自我监控（通过完成每日PA日志）PA体验的各个方面，这些方面是心理性质的（即，情感），生理性质的（如，卡路里燃烧等），或中性的（即，仅自我报告所进行的活动）。自我监测干预将只在参与研究的第一个月进行，之后，参与者将在3点和3点完成随访评估

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The vast majority of Americans do not engage in enough physical activity (PA) and rates of participation are particularly low for women aged 45 years or older. The association between regular PA and reduced risk for breast cancer is well established with some estimates suggesting that physically active women may be as much as 80% less likely to develop breast cancer compared to physically inactive women. For this reason, there is great public health incentive to increase PA rates among middle-aged women. How best to motivate PA behavior is an area of study in need of a more concrete theoretical framework. Research conducted across several broad areas of psychology including, clinical, social, and health have consistently implicated self-monitoring as an effective intervention for increasing participation in health behaviors (i.e., PA). In terms of what aspects of the PA experience might be most useful to self-monitor, recent work suggests that among the middle-aged female demographic, increased awareness of the immediate benefits PA holds for everyday life (i.e., affect improvement) may be important. The PA-affect relationship may be an especially relevant focus as more favorable affect during and immediately following exercise has been linked to subsequently greater PA intentions and more frequent exercise behavior over time. A crucial limitation of past work studying the PA-affect relationship has been the inherent inability to study the relationship using an experimental design. A specific aim of the proposed study is to address this gap in the literature. Although it is not possible to randomly assign an individual to have a pre-specified affective response to PA, it is possible to randomly assign an individual to attend to a pre-specified aspect of the PA experience through the use of self-monitoring. Specifically, this study will assign women aged 40-60 to self-monitor (by completing daily PA-journals) aspects of the PA experience that are psychological in nature (i.e., affect), physiological in nature (e.g., calories burned etc.), or neutral (i.e., self-reportonly the activity that was performed). The self-monitoring intervention will take part during first mont of study participation only - thereafter, participants will complete follow-up assessments at 3 and 6-months post-baseline that will assess levels of PA participation and other psychosocial variables. In addition to testing the effectiveness of the self- monitoring intervention, an exploratory aim of this project is to examine the mechanisms by which the self- monitoring interventions influenced behavior change and maintenance through a meditational analysis utilizing constructs from a novel theoretical model of PA, the Theory of Physical Activity Maintenance (PAM). The long-term objectives of this project are (1) to better understand the factors that motivate and maintain PA behavior among middle-aged women; and (2) to inform the design of future PA-based interventions and clinical trials focused on promoting women's health generally, and breast cancer prevention efforts specifically. ! ! !