A longitudinal examination of the impact of ‘travel advisors’ on psycho-social predictors and physical activity

Abstract

Introduction: 'Personal Travel Planning' (PTP) interventions are used to motivate people to change behaviour through active travel. This research aimed to investigate whether the influence of 'Travel Advisors' (TA) used in PTP interventions can motivate residents to engage in higher levels of physical activity (PA) and improve health status. Further, this research aimed to explore how behaviour change theory through the application of 'Theory of Planned Behaviour' (TPB) and 'Health Belief Model' (HBM) can be used to explain physical activity, intention and behaviour.Method: The survey targeted residents who lived in the 'PTP' target area and measured those who talked to a 'TA', and compared the differences to those who did not. As well as PA, health status was recorded to see if further improvements would be made for those who had spoken to a 'TA'. Participants contained initially 831 adults, and this reduced to 242 adults by the end of twelve months. The average age was fairly consistent of 30 – 31years across each wave of the survey. Similarly, the gender split was consistent across surveys being approximately 30% male and 70% female. To measure PA, the short form International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) was used. The short-form health questionnaire (SF36) was used to report physical and mental health to measure health status. The 'TPB' questionnaire was selected to measure psychosocial predictors as it had been used in previous 'PTP' research. The 'HBM' was used to measure public benefit in relation to health. Both questionnaires amended items to support the nature of the study.Participants were measured at three time points; Baseline, Six and Twelve months. Only those who completed all three-time points were considered to be reported in this thesis. Results: IPAQ reported that those who had spoken to a 'TA' recorded more PA (1852.18 metabolic minutes) than those who didn't (649.08 metabolic minutes) after twelve months. Furthermore, the SF36 reported that those who spoke to a 'TA' reported better physical health (M= 95.98, S.D = 4.50) than those who did not (M=93.08, S.D = 7.01). This was also true for Mental Health (M=62.08, S.D = 8.75) compared to those who did not (M=57.98, S.D. = 8.05) after twelve months.ANOVA's revealed that there were big significant Interaction effects for components; 'Attitude', 'Intention', 'Perceived Behavioural Control', 'Subjective Norms', 'Benefits', 'Susceptibility' and, 'Severity'. There were smaller interaction effects for components; 'Barriers' and 'Health Motivation'.The 'TPB' variance predicted in intention ranged from 76% to 95% in cross-sectional analyses and was 33% in the longitudinal path analyses. The variance predicted in behaviour ranged from 9.6% to 37.6% in cross-sectional analyses and was 32.6% in the longitudinal path analyses. The 'HBM' variance predicted in intention ranged from 79.1% to 94.2% in cross-sectional analyses and was 10.1% in the longitudinal path analyses. The variance predicted in behaviour ranged from 15.7% to 37.5% in cross-sectional analysesand was 9.7% in the longitudinal path analyses. Consistent predictors in the cross-sectional path analyses were 'Self-Efficacy and 'Intention'.Discussion: Those who had spoken to a 'TA reported' more PA and better mental health overall. There was no significant difference on physical health. It appears that a mix of 'TPB' and 'HBM' predictors play a role in predicting both intention and behaviour. 'Self-Efficacy' seems to be the strongest consistent predictor. Within the 'TPB', predictors 'PBC' and 'Subjective Norms' had greater associations with PA, while 'Barriers' seems strongest within the 'HBM' Future interventions can use the findings from this research to help make them more effective.

Date of Award	Jul 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bedfordshire
Supervisor	Andrew Guppy (Supervisor) & Erica Cook (Second supervisor)