Aerobics Instructors’ Participant-Perceived Instructor Autonomy Support and Participants’ Intrinsic Motivation for Exercise

Abstract

The respondents are predominantly male, adult, and highly experienced aerobics instructors, indicating a mature and skilled group well-equipped to handle the demands of their profession.
Aerobics instructors generally perceive themselves as effective in supporting participant autonomy across all dimensions, particularly by explaining activity rationale, providing effort-based feedback, and fostering self-paced learning and initiative, while areas such as shared decision-making and fully acknowledging participant feelings show slight room for improvement.
Male instructors perceive themselves as more autonomy-supportive than female instructors, while the number of years of teaching experience does not significantly influence instructors’ self-assessed autonomy-supportive practices.
Participants are generally intrinsically motivated to exercise, with motivation driven mainly by a strong sense of accomplishment, persistence despite challenges, enjoyment of activities, personal progress, and self-directed engagement rather than external rewards.
Respondents’ sex significantly influences perceptions of participants’ intrinsic motivation, with male instructors consistently rating motivation higher than female instructors, while years of experience do not significantly affect these perceptions, indicating that participants are generally viewed as intrinsically motivated regardless of instructor tenure. Autonomy-supportive instruction has a strong and significant positive influence on participants’ intrinsic motivation, leading to higher enjoyment, persistence, engagement, and sense of accomplishment in exercise activities.