Motivation and Physical Activity across Chinese Adolescents: Based on Latent Profile Analysis

Using the person-centered approach, this paper explores the relationship between adolescent motivation and physical activity. We aim to identify the latent motivation profiles and examine how these profiles differential predict physical activity (PA) levels, with attention to gender and age variations. This study recruited 571 adolescents (M age = 11.995, SD = 1.519) in southern China by the scale of Sport Motivation Scale and International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form.

We conducted latent profile analysis (LPA) to classify motivation subgroups using Mplus. MANOVA and ANOVA were employed to compare PA differences across profiles, genders, and education levels. The results indicate that three profile model is the optimal model: Low Motivation-High Amotivation (8.45%), Moderate Motivation-High Amotivation (60.61%), and High Autonomous Motivation (30.94%). The subgroup with higher scores of intrinsic motivation and external motivation reported more PA.