UC San Diego

Objective: Physical inactivity is a leading cause of death and majority of the adolescent population is insufficiently physically active. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether depressive mood and social support are correlated with physical activity goal setting, specifically goal importance and goal confidence. Methods: Data was collected from an ongoing study in a UC San Diego Chicas Fuertes. Data was cleaned to focus on intervention participants since they set behavior change goals compared to the control group. Most of the data is self-reported by participants. Results: A correlation matrix was used to evaluate associations between measures. Majority of the results were of small effect with r-values < 0.2 possibly due to the small sample size. Depression measurement (CES-D) scores were not statistically significant with goal setting such as goal confidence and importance. Social support scores (SSE) were also not statistically significant to goal confidence and importance. Conclusion: Physical inactivity is a global health issue and is greatly affecting vulnerable communities such as ethnic, minorities, and low SES. Specifically, Latina adolescents are an at-risk group of developing chronic conditions and living a sedentary lifestyle due to their low levels of physical activity compared to the males and other ethnicities. Social support and goal setting may be useful in promoting PA amongst this group. Our analysis had small effects but call for additional research to examine behavior change in Latina adolescents.