Self-determination and healthy lifestyles: an exploratory study on veteran athletes

• Autor(a) principal: Batista, Marco
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Castuera, Ruth, Honório, Samuel, Mendes, Pedro, Paulo, Rui, Mesquita, Helena
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.11/6676
• topic: Self-determination; Lifestyle; Sports; Veterans

The Theory of Self-determination relates to motivation and assumes the importance of meeting basic psychological needs in the appearance of self-determined behavior, as the future engagement with sports or exercise that leads to other healthy lifestyles habits. We intend to: i) characterize the motivation and satisfaction of basic psychological needs to practice sport ii) knowing the lifestyles iii) realize that self-determination variables influences the healthy lifestyles. Agreed to participate 684 veteran athletes of both sexes (age: 43.8 ± 8.6 years; mostly with 3 to 5 hours of weekly training, years of practice: 19.5 ± 12.2). We have applied the Portuguese versions of Basic Psychological Needs Scale Exercise (BPNES), the Behavioral Regulation in Sport Questionnaire (BRSQ) and Healthy Lifestyle Questionnaire, with the inclusion of sociodemographic data. We used SPSS software (IBM, Statistics 21.0) for processing data, with a focus on descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. The sample showed high levels in basic psychological needs and autonomous motivation, and lower values of controlled motivation and amotivation. In terms of lifestyles, revealed high levels of nutrition habits and rest, and lower values of tobacco consumption habits. Once correlated, the basic psychological needs showed positive and significant correlations with autonomous motivation levels, nutrition habits and rest. Levels of satisfaction with life showed significant and positive correlations with autonomous motivation levels and positive affect, and negative correlations with controlled motivation and amotivation. In regression analysis, nutrition habits and rest are predicted positively by autonomous motivation, as well as the basic psychological needs and negatively by controlled motivation. The results showed that veteran athletes have a good self-determination for sports practice, showing healthy lifestyles related to that same self-determination.