Why Don’t You Exercise? Development of the Amotivation Toward Exercise Scale among Older Inactive Individuals

Abstract

This article reports on the development and initial validation of the Amotivation Toward Exercise Scale (ATES), which reflects a taxonomy of older adults’ reasons to refrain from exercise. Drawing on work by Pelletier, Dion, Tuson, and Green-Demers (1999) and Legault, Green-Demers, and Pelletier (2006), these dimensions were the outcome beliefs, capacity beliefs, effort beliefs, and value amotivation beliefs toward exercise. The results supported a 4-factor correlated model that fit the data better than either a unidimensional model or a 4-factor uncorrelated model or a hierarchical model with strong internal reliability for all the subscales. Evidence also emerged for the discriminant validity of the subscale scores. Furthermore, the predictive validity of the subscale scores was supported, and satisfactory measurement invariance was demonstrated across the calibration and validation samples, supporting the generalizability of the scale’s measurement properties.