Predicting Lifelong Participation in Physical Activity: The Role of Dispositional and Contextual Motivation in Physical Education

Physical inactivity is one of the biggest causes of mortality in the United Kingdom. To tackle the growing health concern, physical education lessons have been identified as an accessible source to promote later life engagement in physical activity. Determinants of physical education have been extensively explored, yet very few studies have investigated its role in the long term promotion of participation in physical activity. The primary aim of this thesis is to identify the degree to which physical education experiences and factors support long term participation in physical activity. To achieve this, physical education experiences were explored through prospective and retrospective studies. The thesis identifies factors associated with changes in engagement from year 7 to year 9 and provides an estimation of the effect each of these variables has on later-life physical activity engagement through structural equational modelling. Secondly, the thesis highlights the challenges that researchers are faced in collecting data as a consequence of an inadequate data set obtained through a triangulation approach.