The Relationship between First-year Student Motivation for Learning Physical Fitness Course and Quality Physical Fitness Instructional Service: The Case of Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia

Abstract

The motivation of students for learning is affected by quality physical fitness instructional service. However, it is not clear how the quality of the physical fitness instructional service predicts a student’s motivation to learn physical fitness courses. Besides, the relationships between contextual factors and quality physical fitness instructional service are not explored. This study examines the relationship between quality physical fitness instructional service and the motivation of students to learn physical fitness courses. Moreover, it also examines the extent to which contextual factors predict quality physical fitness instructional service. This study further examines the extent to which quality physical fitness instructional services interact with contextual variables to predict students’ motivation for learning physical fitness courses at Bahir Dar University. A cross-sectional research design consisting of 323 samples from the total population of 1860, using systematic random sampling techniques, is used for the study. The average age of the majority of students (n= 216, 66.9%) is 20. The quality of physical fitness instructional service and the motivation of students for learning the course are assessed by using the adapted standard tools, Service Quality Assessment Scale (SQAS), and Exercise Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-E) respectively. The analysis involves correlation and multiple regression analysis.  Based on the data collected and analyzed, the following findings were obtained. The Pearson correlation results indicated that all motivational variables are significantly associated with most quality variables (p<.01). Particularly, intrinsic and introjection motivation is significantly associated with all quality variables (p<.01).  In this study, the regression analysis also examined that the contextual variables slightly predicted the quality physical fitness instructional service (p<.05). However, the regression analysis confirmed that the quality physical fitness instructional service and contextual factors, together as predictors, accounted for 22% and 16% of the variance in intrinsic and introjection motivation respectively (p<.05). This means that twenty-two per cent of the variance in internal motivation and sixteen per cent of introjection motivation are accounted for by the predictor quality variables. The implication is that there is a need for an intervention in quality physical fitness service variables to influence student motivation for physical fitness courses.