Abstract
Few studies have explored exercise and motivational patterns of cardiac rehabilitation patients in the long term. The first purpose of this study was to explore if differential patterns of exercise exists in cardiac rehabilitation patients over a 24-month period. A second aim was to examine the trajectories of motivational constructs and their relationship with emerging patterns of exercise. Cardiac rehabilitation patients (n=251) completed an exercise, barrier self-efficacy, outcome expectations and self-determined motivation questionnaire over a 2-year period. Latent class growth modeling was used to classify patients in different exercise and motivational patterns. Three exercise patterns emerged: inactive, non-maintainers and maintainers (16%; 67% and 17% of sample per pattern, respectively). Multiple trajectories were found for barrier self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and self-determined motivation (3, 5, and 4, respectively). Analyses showed that patients in high barrier self-efficacy, outcome expectation, and self-determined groups had greater probability of being in the maintainer exercise group. This study demonstrated that cardiac rehabilitation participants vary significantly in maintaining exercise patterns over a 24-month period. Identifying a patient's motivational profile could help cardiac rehabilitation programs tailor their intervention to optimize the potential for continued exercise activity.Acknowledgments: This study was supported by a research grant from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario (HBR 4600). Shane N. Sweet was supported by a doctoral fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.