KINESIOLOGY 1150

Physical (In)activity and Messaging about

Physical Activity
 Today’s Learning Objectives:
• Discuss levels of PA interventions
• Describe the public health approach
• Introduce a framework for evaluating interventions
• Explain: Strategies to enhance physical activity
messaging
• Discuss: The importance of messaging about
physical activity
• Application: Create and evaluate physical activity
messages based on the four strategies to enhance
physical activity messages
Group Task
1. Brainstorm ideas on how to promote either of the
following in children and youth:
• Increased physical activity
• Decreased sedentary behaviour

2. Identify potential obstacles/challenges to your strategies,

as well as realistic ways to overcome these barriers.
Interventions for Promoting Physical Activity
• What is the goal of physical activity interventions?
• To help people change their behaviour and replace
sedentary pursuits with active ones
• Effective interventions are required to promote the
adoption and maintenance of active lifestyles

Marcus & Forsyth, 2008

Levels of Interventions
 Three levels of intervention can be used:

1. Downstream
2. Midstream
3. Upstream

McKinlay & Marceau, 2000

Downstream
• Individual-level interventions for those who
possess the risk factor or suffer from risk-related
diseases/conditions
• Emphasis is on changing rather than preventing
health-damaging behaviours
• Examples:
• Physician counselling for patients with diabetes
• Health education for cardiac patient

McKinlay & Marceau, 2000

Midstream
• Population-level (specific populations)
interventions that target defined populations for the
purpose of changing and/or preventing health-
damaging behaviours
• Involve mediation through important
organizational channels
• Examples:
• Community-based exercise program for new moms
• Installation of workplace fitness facility

McKinlay & Marceau, 2000

Upstream
• Macro-level (i.e., state/provincial and national) public
policy or environmental interventions to strengthen
social norms and supports for healthy behaviours and
to redirect unhealthy societal counterforces
• “Blanket” interventions for anyone who wants to use
them
• Examples:
• Increase time for “walk” sign on crosswalks
• Fitness tax credit

McKinlay & Marceau, 2000

 Public health impact
• To have a population-level impact, a public-health
approach involves interventions at all three levels
simultaneously:
• Upstream public policy
• Midstream prevention
• Downstream treatments

Why is this important?

What are some limitations of only using one level?

McKinlay & Marceau, 2000

 Physical Activity
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mE3Byyd8Y&feat
ure=related

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLHYnRCd8sA

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HTIOiRnZE4&list=PLHN
PsrHtxoqniRNSbg44gEjUGj4-Sn9MK
Re: Physical Activity Guidelines
• Early years: Infants several times/day; toddlers and preschoolers 180
minutes/day
• Children and youth: at least 60 minutes/day MVPA
• Adults and older adults: at least 150 minutes/week MVPA

• These guidelines are evidence-based recommendations

about how much physical activity it takes to obtain health
benefits
• The guidelines are the goal; they are not intended to
motivate individuals
• Tell us nothing about why or how to be active

Brawley & Latimer, 2007;

Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, 2011; Latimer et al., 2010
 Messaging about Physical Activity
• To motivate individuals to be regularly active, persuasive
messages must be used that convey information about the
“why” and “how”
Messages Messaging
• All of the information to be • The process of getting the
conveyed to public message to the public
• Physical activity guidelines • Using media that the target
• Benefits of physical activity audience is most likely to
• Ways to be active use

But what should be considered when

creating physical activity messages?
Latimer et al., 2010
Strategies to Enhance Physical Activity Messages

1. Include certain message qualities

• Novel – best if messages are unusual, unfamiliar, unique
• Vivid (richness of information) – attracts more attention
• Salient – stands out

Brawley & Latimer, 2007

Strategies to Enhance Physical Activity Messages
2. Create relevance
• Tailoring – present information in a manner that
best fits an individual’s needs/characteristics
• E.g., include specific identifying characteristics of the
individual (hometown)
• Not suitable for mass-media campaigns
• Targeting – define a population group based on a
common characteristic; provide information
consistent with that groups’ characteristics
• E.g., groups segmented by demographic characteristics (age,
race, sex)
• Allows for implementation at a larger group level

Brawley & Latimer, 2007; Latimer et al., 2010

Strategies to Enhance Physical Activity Messages

3. Choose appropriate message framing

• The emphasis a message has on the benefits of adopting
physical activity behaviour (gain-framed) or the costs of
failing to adopt physical activity behaviour (loss-framed)
• Gain-framed = emphasize the benefits of being active
• Loss-framed = emphasize the costs of being inactive

Brawley & Latimer, 2007; Latimer et al., 2010

Quick Task
• With the person sitting next to you, create an example of a
gain-framed physical activity message and an example of a
loss-framed physical activity message.
Strategies to Enhance Physical Activity Messages

3. Choose appropriate message framing

• Research suggests that gain-framed messages are typically
more effective for promoting physical activity
• Increased intentions to be active
• Increased physical activity behaviour
• Gain-framed messages persuade individuals to engage in
preventive behaviours that are not risky (e.g., dental
hygiene, physical activity)
• Loss-framed messages persuade individuals to engage in
detection behaviours that are risky (e.g., HIV testing)
• If you don’t get tested, you won’t know you have
the disease
Latimer et al., 2010
Strategies to Enhance Physical Activity Messages

4. Create accessible messages

• Ability of individuals to obtain, process, understand a health

message

• Written messages too often exceed health literacy level of

population

• Potential barrier to message processing (results in poor

comprehension, failure to use the information)

Brawley & Latimer, 2007

Messaging about Physical Activity

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY5AILaXDdA
Evaluating Messaging Campaigns
• Planning AND evaluation are essential
• Planning provides blueprint
• Evaluation provides evidence
• Framework for evaluation
• Evaluation should occur at all phases of campaign planning and
implementation
• Formative evaluation (includes pre-testing messages)
• Process evaluation (includes monitoring campaign reach)
• Does it reach and hit home with the target audience? (e.g., PA ads for
senior citizens in the Langara newspaper)
• Outcome evaluation (assess if campaign achieved its goals)
• Evaluation provides insight into successful and unsuccessful
elements of campaign

Brawley & Latimer, 2007

 G.I… Whoa!
1960s 1990s

http://megomuseum.com/community/showthre http://ronsrescuedtreasures.com/Gi-GI-Joe-Ex
ad.php?83022-Classic-GI-Joe-ref-needed-Has treme-Sgt-Savage-Action-Figure-5-Tall-1996-
bro-body-Evolution/page2 Hasbro-P1594168.aspx
 Barbie GI Joe
Then and now Then and now

misslaura.com toyfigures.com
A More Realistic Barbie?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2353420/Artist-Nikolay-Lamm-shown-Barbie-look-li
ke-measurements-normal-19-year-old-woman.html
Media Images – How have each evolved?
Barbie G.I. Joe
 Batman Present

1974

http://megomuseum.com/wgsh
/batman.html
https://www.figurerealm.com/viewc
ustomfigure.php?FID=50845
 Media Images – “Ideal” Female Body
1950s Present

1990s

http://chasingtheimpossibleblog.wordp
ress.com/tag/marilyn-monroe/ http://www.pinterest.com/pin/91
549804899263892/
 Media Images – “Ideal Male Body”
??? Old Present
1990s

http://tribes.tribe.net/beautifulmenev
erywhere/photos/9a4f89c4-c79a-49f
b-ad65-61fac22471d3
http://www.justjared.com/2013/12/1
8/joe-manganiello-gives-inside-look-
to-his-shirtless-workout/
http://angiebug.typepad.com/blog/2011/
04/page/2/
Media Images
• Pervasiveness of media leads to unavoidable exposure
to content
• Billboards, radio, magazines, television, internet, etc.
• Mass media transmits unrealistic expectations of an
ideal body
• Reflects current values
• Young, abnormally slender yet toned (for women), slender and increasingly
muscular (for men)

So what?
Why does it matter that these images
are transmitted through mass media?
Groesz et al., 2002;
Grogan, 2008; Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003
“Negative” Media Images
• Ideal images put pressure on us to look a certain way (i.e., be a
particular shape and size)
• Most women want to be thinner and are expected to work on their
body (e.g., diet, exercise, cosmetic surgery)
• Most men want to be thinner or heavier (muscle) and exercise
(rather than diet) to change their body
• Exposure to ideal media images associated with:
• Decreased:
• Self-esteem, muscularity satisfaction, and body satisfaction
• Increased:
• Negative affect, body-related anxiety, body size distortion, dieting and
other restrictive eating practices, drive for thinness, social comparisons,
body weight and shape dissatisfaction
Grogan, 2008; Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003
Case Study
You are the teacher of a co-ed grade 9 Physical Education class.
Recently, you have overheard a lot of your students talking about ideal
images they see in the media. You become particularly concerned for
your students’ well-being after repeatedly hearing comments that they
feel pressure from the media to look a certain way, and end up feeling
badly about themselves when they do not measure up to the images
shown in the media. You have decided to take action and develop a
workshop to address this matter, in hopes that this workshop will be
included in the grade 9 Phys. Ed. curriculum across British Columbia.

• What will your workshop look like?

• What are the goals of your workshop?
• What activities might you include?
• What resources would you use?
Challenging Negative Media Images

• How can we combat these types of negative images in the

media?

1. Positive media imagery

2. Individual level media literacy

3. Societal level media literacy

Positive Media Imagery
• Images that reject unattainable ideal body image
• Images that are not associated with adverse affects
(e.g., body dissatisfaction)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17j5QzF3kqE

Grogan, 2008
Media Literacy
• Individual level
• Media literacy training
• Resist internalization via psychoeducational interventions -> gives individuals
information to make more informed, self-managed decisions
• E.g., Focus on unrealistic standards and tricks used to create
unrealistic images (e.g., photoshop)
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy
• Change the way incoming social information is interpreted
• Cognitive re-structuring (i.e., change thoughts from irrational and
unrealistic to rational)
• E.g., Fear of flying
• Self-monitoring (i.e., includes self-awareness so you know when
to change thoughts)
Grogan, 2008
 Media Literacy
• Societal level
• “Society” rejects and challenges media conceptions of the
“ideal” body image
• Is this happening?
• …it’s been reported that the new ideal body (for women) favors a more
muscular, worked-out, strong-looking body rather than a waifish, weak-
looking, very thin body
• Last 25-30 years, new trend for media to discuss their use of idealized
images
• In 1996, a watch manufacturer withdraws ads from popular
fashion magazine because models in the magazine are so thin
they appear anorexic
• In 2012, Vogue magazine vows to use healthier looking models
to promote responsible body image within their pages
Grogan, 2008
Small-Group Task: Positive (?) Media Imagery

Do attempts at the societal level, such as those made by

Vogue/Dove, reflect a cultural awareness of the potential
dangers of presenting unrealistic ideal images, and are
thus helpful for a more accepting, positive society?

Or, does this create/add to the cultural awareness of

the ideal body image?

Are there any other potential problems with this approach?

 You should be able to:
• Discuss levels of Physical Activity interventions
• Describe the public health approach
• Evaluate: Physical Activity interventions
• Explain: Strategies to enhance physical activity
messaging
• Discuss: The importance of messaging about
physical activity
• Application: Create and evaluate physical activity
messages based on the four strategies to enhance
physical activity messages