Physical Activity Motivation Climate Questionnaire: Validity, Reliability and Measurement Invariance

Regular physical activity is a key facilitator of health [1].However, in spite of the well documented evidence concerning its physical and mental health benefits, a significant number of people fail to maintain an active lifestyle [2].As such, how to promote physical activity is an urgent issue to be addressed.Among factors that can influence people's physical activity behavior, motivation is of importance [3].Self-determination theory (SDT), as a prominent motivation theory [4,5], may contribute to our understanding of physical activity behavior.SDT underscores the importance of fostering an autonomy-supportive motivation climate.Such climate is characterized by minimizing control, providing choice to autonomous decision making process, supporting individuals' initiative, eliciting and considering individuals' viewpoint [6].It is suggested that an autonomy-supportive motivation climate is contributive to the internalization of behavioral regulation, which can have a positive influence on adaptive behavior outcomes, such as physical activity behavior [7][8][9].Such internalization denotes the process in which less self-determined behavioral regulations are transformed to more self-determined behavioral regulations along a continuum.From the least to the most self-determined form, they are a motivation, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic motivation [10].Given the importance of an autonomy-supportive motivation climate in the physical activity context, a valid and reliable instrument is desirable.Past research has widely adapted the 6-item short form of the Health Care Climate Questionnaire (HCCQ) for use [7,11].However, the HCCQ is designed initially for measuring patients' perception of the extent to which health care professionals provide