Self-setting of physical activity goals and effects on perceived difficulty, importance and competence

Goal setting can be a powerful method for persuading individuals to adopt an active lifestyle. In order for this to be the case, it is important to set concrete and challenging goals, and to strongly commit to them. In this study, we explored how people set goals for physical activity and how these goals were reflected in self-regulatory mechanisms to drive goal attainment. Our approach is novel in two ways: first, we used an unobtrusive wearable sensor to accurately measure physical activity throughout the day rather than rely on self-report, and second, we provided individuals with feedback about the contribution of their common daily activities (e.g., household activities) to their physical activity level. Our results showed that on the basis of this feedback, participants were able to indicate to what degree they intended to change their behavior. Nevertheless, they failed to set concrete goals that matched their intentions precisely. In particular, we observed that overall the set goals were in accordance with intentions (i.e., goals were set in the desired direction), but we saw a strong tendency to focus on enhancing vigorous activity at the cost of moderate intensity activity. This suggests that many individuals have intentions to change and goal setting support is needed to compose goals that accurately reflect these intentions. Technology-mediated interventions might be ideal to support individuals along that path.