Abstract :
[en] A decline in physical activity (PA) with increasing age has been reported consistently (e.g., Bassett et al., 2015). In this sense, physical education (PE) has become a key issue to intercept youth, in order to promote PA at an early age. To reduce the research gap with regard to the underlying mechanisms of this decline, we investigated the role of age for motivational aspects of the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) concerning scholars’ basic needs (competence, relatedness, autonomy; Vlachopoulos, Ntoumanis, & Smith, 2010), PE teacher need-support (Standage, Duda, & Ntoumanis, 2005), and different motivational regulation types during PE (Vlachopoulos, Katartzi, Kontou, Moustaka, & Goudas, 2011). As a transfer of motivational regulation types from PE towards a leisure-time context has been found (Hagger & Chatzisarantis, 2016), this study furthermore analyzed the role of age in an out-of-school PA environment (Markland & Tobin, 2004).
In total, 1889 scholars (50.9% males; 10 to 23 years) from 14 different schools participated in the study. Consistent with previous findings, the self-reported PA decreased with age. Further regression analysis revealed that the feeling of being competent during PE decreased with age, while the feeling of being autonomous increased. No differences regarding age and need-support during PE were found. Regarding the motivational regulation types during PE, the internal motivation decreased with age, while the external motivation increased. Concerning the leisure-time context, all motivational regulation types towards PA decreased with age. SEM-Models confirmed the significant relationship between motivational regulation types from PE to a leisure-time context. Overall, results suggest that a decrease of PA with age might be related to a decrease of internal motivation forms as years go by. Implications for promoting beneficial motivational regulation types during PE related to the age of scholars will be displayed.