Abstract :
[en] Various (inter)national organizations and institutions expend a great deal of effort on fighting against the dramatic grow of the sedentariness of the modern society. In consumer magazines as well as in prestigious scientific journals, number of publications emphasize the interest that each of us can withdraw from a regular active lifestyle. So, nowadays, in the Western countries, everyone is supposed to know that physical activity is one of the ingredients of a healthy lifestyle. Nevertheless, it is clear that the population seems to paradoxically misunderstand the concept of physical activity. Moreover, in terms of sedentariness, the female audience is considered as particularly at risk and requires specific attention.
According to the socioecological models, physical activity behaviors are influenced by a large array of variables belonging to the person itself as well as for its social, built, natural environments, and policies. In parallel, the transtheoretical model of health behavior change emphasizes that a person who changes his/her behavior goes through five stages (precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance). Following that theory, the starting point of the change process consists of the awareness of the individual about the behavior. This stage refers to the individual factors linked to psychological, cognitive and emotional aspects (knowledge about PA, expected benefits, motivation, perceived pleasure …) that can be related to the people’s representations about PA. A representation can be defined as a mental phenomenon that corresponds to a more or less conscientious, organized and consistent set of cognitive and affective elements concerning one particular object.
The goal of this paper is to underline the interest of the analysis of the representations about PA in a way to understand the reasons of reluctance, motivation and/or blockages demonstrated by individuals - and by women in particular - in their changing process. Study on such topic could become a key aspect in the search for useful tools in the habits transformation. In fact, despite representations’ central role, very few studies focusing on this variable have been published in the literature. This is especially surprising as it was demonstrated that representations about PA have a bigger influence on the lifestyle modification than concrete environmental variables do.
When considering representations about PA, we consider five elements: definition, believes about the impacts, knowledge of the recommendations, self-evaluation, and identification of the change strategies). These questions will be the focus of the paper. Data will support and illustrate their legitimacy in the physical activity promotion.
