Browsing by Subject "Health Behavior"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Fueling Physical Activity with a Hybrid Motivational System: How Multiple Sources of Motivation and Experiences Promote Physical Activity Across Contexts and Time
    (2023-05) Furman, Celina
    A critical feature of physical activity as a health behavior is that it must be performed regularly, and ideally over the course of one’s lifetime. However, only a small number of people engage in recommended amounts of physical activity to attain its health benefits, and interventions have had limited success in producing long-term behavioral adherence. Thus, more work is needed to identify constructs that produce lasting changes in physical activity. To understand physical activity as a repeated behavior, this dissertation presents a novel dynamic model of physical activity that describes how multiple sources of motivation work together in a hybrid manner to drive physical activity across contexts and time, and specifies how the outcomes afforded by physical activity help to sustain or undermine motivation for subsequent physical activity. Two studies were conducted to test a set of predictions derived from this model. First, a combination of intrinsic and instrumental motives is posited to be important for sustaining strong physical activity intentions, especially when one encounters barriers to physical activity. Study 1 used hypothetical scenarios to examine how these motives work together to strengthen physical activity intentions under various circumstances that differ in the extent to which they tempt participants to skip their planned exercise. Findings provided mixed evidence for the role of instrumental motivation, but suggest that intrinsic motivation may help sustain intentions across contexts by reducing the extent to which various barriers tempt one to skip their exercise. Second, affective and instrumental outcomes of physical activity are suggested to have distinct feedback loops that influence motivation for subsequent physical activity. Study 2 experimentally manipulated these different outcomes through an in-person exercise paradigm, and tested their relationships with motivation and intentions for continued exercise. A 2-week follow-up assessment examined the sustainability of each outcome as fueling sources of intentions over time. Findings provided evidence for distinct affective and instrumental feedback loops, but their implications for sustaining intentions over time are unclear. Recommendations for refining my model based on evidence obtained through Studies 1 and 2 are discussed alongside directions for future research.
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    Mass Disasters and Global Child Health in the Demographic and Health Surveys
    (2019-03) Tate, Allan
    Both natural disaster researchers and policymakers tend to assume that every disaster is unique, and therefore generalizations are not possible. But effect consistency and the appropriateness about generalizing have not been systematically examined. Accordingly, this dissertation tests if disasters have consequences on health and health behaviors in multiple low- and middle-income countries. Manuscript 1 asks, Can epidemiologic methods be fruitfully applied for disaster public health research using existing data? Manuscript 2 asks, What are the health consequences of disasters, and is there evidence that ‘all disasters are unique’ in their effects on child mortality, fever, and diarrheal disease? Manuscript 3 considers the question, Do disasters cause mothers to change their behavior when seeking treatment for child illness? We exploit the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) that, by chance, were in the field before and/or after a natural disaster. Analysis shows that disasters are associated with consistent declines in cases of fever and diarrheal disease, but this is not to say that disasters are health-promoting in their own rite. Disasters were not related to change in maternal treatment-seeking behaviors, nor were they related to differences in location where treatment is sought. These particularly severe disasters did not systematically impact maternal health behavior. This study provided evidence that disasters of various types have similar impact on health and behavior. A change in the perception about disasters and global child health may reveal opportunities for research and policy innovations that can reshape how disaster preparedness is administered globally.
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    Who eats their feelings, and who sweats them out?: Understanding how individuals and their romantic partners use eating and exercise for emotion regulation
    (2022-04) Jones, Rachael
    Researchers argue that individuals’ emotion regulation affects their long-term health outcomes by leading them to engage in health behaviors to cope with their stress and negative emotions. However, there is a need to isolate health behavior for this purpose from individuals’ typical health behavior, and to include health-promoting behaviors, such as exercise, in addition to health-compromising behaviors, such as eating junk food. Furthermore, emotion regulation and health behavior often occur around close others and are influenced by them, highlighting the need to study the social context around these processes. Thus, this dissertation examines how individuals’ and their romantic partners’ emotion regulation and typical health behavior predict their use of eating and exercise to down-regulate negative emotion. Participants reported their typical health habits and use of eating and exercise for emotion regulation, including how frequently they engaged in the behaviors and how they deviated from their typical health behavior when doing so. Participants’ balanced (i.e., constructive and effective) emotion regulation was measured by well-established self-report surveys as well as by their behavior during conflict discussions with their romantic partners, which was coded by trained observers. The results indicated that balanced emotion regulation was not related to individuals’ typical health behavior but was related to their health behavior for emotion regulation. Furthermore, participants reported significantly changing their typical health behavior when using it to cope. Actor Partner Interdependence Model regressions revealed that participants lower in self-reported balanced emotion regulation engaged in eating for emotion regulation more frequently than those higher, especially if they were women. Their typical junk food consumption was not predictive. In contrast, those who typically exercised more in their daily lives used exercise for emotion regulation more frequently than those who exercised less. They also tended to increase their exercise more when using it to regulate their emotions, especially if they were men. Balanced emotion regulation was not related to individuals’ use of exercise to manage their feelings, although those higher in balanced emotion regulation used exercise significantly more often than they used eating for this purpose. Individuals’ partners’ tendencies were sometimes associated with individuals’ eating for emotion regulation, but not with their exercise. Self-reported balanced emotion regulation was more strongly related to other variables than was behavioral balanced emotion regulation. These findings suggest that health behavior for emotion regulation differs from typical health behavior, more dysregulated individuals may eat (but not exercise) more often to cope with their negative feelings, and experience with exercise may be needed to employ physical activity for emotion regulation.