Association Between Prevention Focus and Sedentary Behavior in Older Adults: Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Older adults engage in increased amounts of sedentary behavior (SB), which can result in a significant decline in muscle function and overall health. An understanding of the motivational driving factors that lead older adults to engage in SB can help to create effective intervention programs.

Objective: This study aimed to determine the association between prevention and promotion focus with SB in older adults, as well as compare these associations with two factors (ie, age and BMI) that are commonly known to have an association with SB among older adults.

Methods: A cross-sectional analysis was conducted among 93 community-dwelling older adults with a mean age of 74.98 (SD 6.68) years. Prevention and promotion focus were both assessed using the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire. Correlation analysis was performed to determine the associations between prevention focus, promotion focus, age, and BMI with SB. Anderson-Darling tests confirmed nonnormal data distributions for all factors (except age); therefore, Spearman rank correlation was used to determine correlations between factors. Comparative analysis of significant correlations was performed using Fisher Z transformation.

Results: Prevention focus had the greatest statistically significant correlation with SB (ρ=0.296; P=.004), followed by BMI (ρ=0.204; P=.049). Both age (ρ=0.116; P=.27) and promotion focus (ρ=0.002; P=.99) had statistically insignificant correlations with SB, indicating no associations. The correlation between prevention focus and SB did not significantly differ from the correlation between BMI and SB (P=.51).

Conclusions: Prevention focus was found to have a weak, but significant positive association with SB in older adults. Although age and BMI have been found to have an association with SB in previous literature, age was not associated with SB in this study, while BMI had a significant but relatively weaker association with SB than that with prevention focus. However, the association found between BMI and SB did not statistically differ from the association found between prevention focus and SB. These findings suggest that older adults could be driven to engage in increased amounts of SB due to having a dominant prevention focus, which revolves around thoughts of safety and avoiding negative consequences. The recognition of this association has the potential to aid in developing intervention programs that could promote shifting from prevention to promotion focus, thereby reducing SB in older adults.