Although regular exercise and participation in sports are known to contribute to maintaining and improving health, only a half of Japanese adults engage in these activities. Encouraging greater exercise and sports participation, it is important to motivate indifferent populations for enhancing public health. Therefore, this study aimed to explore persuasive information that strengthens behavioral intention towards exercise and sports using qualitative data analysis. Responses were obtained from 1,200 Japanese adults (600 men and 600 women) registered as monitors with an Internet research company. The survey focused on the stages of exercise behavior transformation (pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, execution, and maintenance) and an open-ended question about who or what makes respondents want to exercise or play sports. Qualitative data analysis software (KH Coder) was used to conduct a co- occurrence network analysis on the text data collected at various stages of exercise behavior, aiming to extract persuasive information specifically targeting the indifferent group (pre- contemplation stage). Compared to individuals in other stages, those in the indifferent group showed the potential strengthening of their intention toward exercise behavior when exposed to “information about health problems from doctors,” “information about health problems and appearance from family members or partner,” “information about support from friends,” and “information about invitations to exercise from their children.” These findings are important for providing information to effectively influence the exercise behavior of indifferent population.
Kawata et al. (Thu,) studied this question.