Running motivations within different populations of Chilean urban runners

Abstract

Background In the past decade, the number of urban runners has considerably increased, specially considering its health-related benefits [1,2]. In Chile, running has been reported as the third most commonly used physical activity (11.9%) after soccer and physical fitness among physically active adults [3]. Motivation, a driving force to achieve personal goals [4], has been linked to exercise adherence and to the capacity of keeping a healthy life [5,6]. Many investigations have been conducted to study running motivations across runners [7-9] through different domains, such as health, personal goals, self-esteem, competition; founding a tendency from internal towards external factors among different experienced runners [10,11]. Even though running is an easily accessible activity, the knowledge of underlying motivational factors among runners could enhance promotion of physical activity participation, regarding that urban life may reduce an individual's motivation for pursuing a better physical lifestyle. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyse motivations for sustaining a consistent running routine in different runner populations from Santiago De Chile using the Motivations of Marathoners Scales (MOMS-34). This is the first study examining the specific values of motivation in different runner groups in South America. Methods A cross-sectional study design using an online web-based survey was carried out. Urban runners over 18 years old were recruited from different sources in Santiago, including three municipal parks, two running races and four running clubs during October of 2015, collecting the emails of each interested participant. The parks were chosen randomly according to three different socioeconomic levels, and the sampling from the other two sources was non-probabilistic. The sample size was calculated expecting a 15% of marathon runners (according to the record from Santiago's Marathon event in 2014 and 2015), with a confident level of 95% and significance set at 5%, estimating a sample size of 196 runners. The online survey was delivered to all recruited runners (n=517) using the Survey Monkey system to their email address. The survey collected information on: socio-demographics characteristics (sex, age and educational level), health (Body Mass Index and previous running-related injury in the last 12 months), training factors (weekly volume, frequency and hours of running training), characteristics associated to practice (years of running experience and runner's self-perception: novice, recreational, track runner, road long distance runner, marathon runner, ultra-marathon runner and trail-runner) [12] and running motivation based on the 7 dimensions of the Motivations of Marathoners Scales (MOMS-34) [11], validated in its Spanish version [13]. This scale consists of 34 questions, grouped into 4 general categories: (1) psychological, (2) achievement, (3) social and (4) physical health reasons, which are divided into 7 specific dimensions: personal goals and competition, health-orientation, weight, recognition, affiliation, psychological goal, and meaning of life and self-esteem. Each dimension is reported on a 7-point Likert scale, where the subjects had to score from minor to major importance the motivation to run. The motivational analysis was made according to sex and the runner's self-perception previously described. Descriptive statistics and Spearman's correlational measurements were analysed using STATA13.0. This study was approved by the Scientific Ethics Committee of Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile. Results The survey response rate was 46.6% (n=241), where 47.3% were females, with a median age of 28 years (Interquartile Range [IQR] 23-39), Body Mass Index of 28 kg/m2 (IQR 21.2-25.1), and 49.8% of runners reported more than 18 years of formal education. A previous running-related injury was reported in 54.4% of participants, occurring most frequently at the knee (25.8%) and ankle/foot (16.3%) segments. From the total of responses, 43.4% were self-reported as long distance runners (10-21km). Table 1 shows the description of socio-demographics, health and self-perception characteristics by sex. Participants reported a median training frequency of 3 days/week (IQR 3-4), a median accumulative training volume of 30km/week (IQR 15-47) and a median of 3 years of running experience (IQR 2-5). According to MOMS-34, the highest scores (>5 points) in both sexes were reported in the 'Health-orientation' and 'Meaning-of-life and self-esteem' dimensions, along with 'Overcoming-personal-goals and competition' in males. The lowest score for both sexes was 'Recognition'. Table 2 shows the motivations of urban runners according to the Motivation of Marathoners Scales (MOMS-34) by sex. A positive weak correlation was observed between motivation-oriented- to-competition and training-volume (rho=0.26; p