Physical activity promotion in communities by exercise health instructors after an official training course

Objectives: To identify the relationships among physical activity promotion experience in communities (PAPEiC), self-efficacy, tool use experience, and promotion attitude of exercise advocates after official training. Methods: The 1,598 sports health instructors who had completed the National Health Administration's "2017 Sports Health Teacher Training Program" were invited through email to take an online survey in October 2018 as follow-up. The respondent rate was 54.13% (n = 865). The outcome variable was self-reported PAPEiC after participation in the course. The independent variables were general demographic variables, tool use experience, promotion attitude, and self-efficacy. Multivariate logistic regression was performed using SAS version 9.4. Results: (1) Overall, 66.36% of the respondents reported that they had promoted physical activity in the community within the 1 year of program completion. (2) Multivariate analysis revealed that PAPEiC was significant correlated with (i) work experience of more than 104 months, (ii) the respondent being a community worker, (iii) use of more types of physical activity promotion tools, and (iv) higher self-efficacy with regard to tool use for physical activity promotion. Conclusions: More than 60% of the trainees promoted physical activity in their communities within 1 year of program completion. Our results suggest that future training programs should involve a more rigorous research design or cost-benefit analysis.