The relationship between aerobic load and personality traits in seniors with different physical activity experience

Abstract

Background: Personality traits are stable and create an individuals’ behaviour as well as allows to predict what kind of exercise type, intensity and frequency they might choose (Allen, Greenlees, & Jones, 2011). Involvement in physical exercises with aerobic elements can improve aerobic capacity, stabilize blood pressure and improve the overall physical and emotional state (Aoike, et al., 2015). Methods: Healthy participants were 31 adults, aged from 65 to 80 years (M = 72,74, SD = 5,1). The participants were divided into three groups - in the first group we included seniors with regular long-term aerobic physical activity experience, in the second group we included seniors with short-term regular aerobic physical activity experience and in the third group we included seniors that do not engage in aerobic physical activity. The data were obtained with four questionnaires – „Latvian Personality questionnaire†(LPA-v3, Perepjolkina, Reņģe, 2013), a modified version of „Social Determinants of Health Behaviours†(FINBALT, 2014) questionnaire, „The International Physical Activity Questionnaire – modification for elderly „ (Hurting-Wennolof, Hagstromer, & Olsson, 2010) and Demographic Data questionnaire (age, sex, language). Participation in the study was voluntary and all patients signed Informed Consent Form before participating in the study. Expected results: Preliminary results indicate significant differences between the three groups in neuroticism (p = .021). Current stage of work: Data acquisition and analysis is in process. Discussion: The research results indicate a relationship between neuroticism as a personality trait and aerobic physical activity load; the character of these relationships is still to be studied.