Ethnic Minorities' Leisure-Time Physical Activity in the Context of Acculturation.

摘要

Eliminating physical activity disparities among ethnic minorities in the U.S. is important. Cultural differences have been found to be plausible contributing factors associated with such disparities. Therefore it is important to investigate and understand the mechanisms by which diverse aspects of cultural experiences affect physical activity participation among ethnic minorities, which should aid in the design and implementation of culturally relevant intervention programs. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the psychosocial mechanisms through which an ethnic minority individual's cultural experiences are translated into physical activity behaviors.;The first manuscript reviews empirical findings about the association between acculturation and physical activity among ethnic minorities. Then, mediation and moderation perspectives of the mechanisms by which the effects of acculturation on leisure-time physical activity can be explained were extracted from various theories of health behaviors. Adopting the theory of triadic influences' (Flay et al., 2009) typology, such mechanisms were converged into intrapersonal, interpersonal, and sociocultural streams of influences.;Next two empirical studies tested cultural influences on leisure-time physical activity participation in Korean Americans, using the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985; 1991) as a framework. In the first empirical study, the mediating effects of perceived behavioral control (PBC; intrapersonal stream), subjective norm (interpersonal stream), and attitude (sociocultural stream) on the relationship between acculturation and leisure-time physical activity intention and participation were tested. We found that acculturation was positively and negatively associated with PBC and subjective norm, respectively, and all tested relationships were gender invariant. Since the theory of planned behavior constructs only partially mediated the effects of acculturation on leisure-time physical activity, future studies should test additional potential mediators. Overall our findings suggest that intervention programs for physical activity promotion should target improving subjective norm among Korean Americans.;The second empirical study tested the moderation effects of cultural value orientation (horizontal and vertical individualism/collectivism), an aspect of value acculturation, on the association between PBC, subjective norm, and attitude and the leisure-time physical activity intention of Korean Americans. Findings indicated that the association between subjective norm and intention was magnified when horizontal collectivism was high; the relationship between PBC and intention was diminished as both horizontal individualism and horizontal collectivism was high. Future studies should further explorer the latent structures of the theory of planned behavior constructs to more clearly interpret the findings of this study.