Time perspective, sports club membership, and physical self-concept among adolescents: A person-centered approach.

INTRODUCTION: Time perspective is defined as thoughts and feelings about the past, present, and future and is theorized to underlie human behavior. Prior research has shown relationships among time perspective and academic achievement, substance use, and risky-driving. In this study, time perspective was extended to sports club membership and physical self-concept among adolescents. METHODS: Time perspective was assessed with a scale that measures positive and negative feelings about the past, present, and future. Latent time attitude profiles were generated with data that included sports club membership and physical self-concept. Participants were German (N = 901; 46.2% female), Luxembourgian (N = 661; 46.7% female), and Spanish (N = 789; 49.0% female) adolescents (12-18 years-old). RESULTS: Latent profile analyses indicated that across the three samples the same number and type of profiles were observed: Ambivalent, Balanced, Optimistic, Past Negative, and Positive. Time attitude profiles were related to sports club membership and physical self-concept. Adolescents with positive attitudinal profiles were more engaged in sports clubs and reported a higher physical self-concept than adolescents in negative attitudinal profiles. CONCLUSIONS: Time perspective was conceptualized as time attitudes and operationalized as positive and negative feelings about the past, present, and future. Results showed that five latent time attitudes profiles were observed and that profile membership was associated with sports club membership and physical self-concept. These associations were demonstrated with three independent samples. Findings were discussed in light of implications for intervention programs that use time perspective to promote physical health among adolescents.

Time attitudes profile stability and transitions: An exploratory study of adolescent health behaviours among high school students.

PURPOSE: Time attitudes refer to individuals' feelings about the past, present, and future, and an increasing number of cross-sectional studies have demonstrated that positive time attitudes are significantly related to better health and well-being. We investigated time attitude profile membership and associated transitions longitudinally in United Kingdom-based adolescents, and assessed the relationship between time attitude profile development on health behaviours at + 21 months after the data collection involving time attitudes. METHODS: Participants were high school students (N = 1306; 41.8% female, Mage 12.5-14.5 years [waves 1-3]). The Adolescent and Adult Time Inventory - Time Attitudes Scale was employed to identify profiles, and a mover-stayer latent transition analysis was employed to examine developmental changes. Data were also gathered on sensation seeking, and a range of health indicators were assessed: Past week frequency of physical exercise, self-rated health, subjective life expectancy, lifetime cannabis and smoking, and dental attendance. RESULTS: Staying in a positive time attitude profile was related to higher subjective life expectancy, and less frequent use of cannabis and cigarettes (1.00 ≤ d ≤ 4.00). Further, moving to a positive profile predicted healthier outcomes for most health measures used. CONCLUSIONS: Notwithstanding the limitation that health outcomes in the present study were distal, the present study bolstered a developing cross-sectional literature supporting the association between positive time attitudes and better health and well-being outcomes. Future longitudinal studies which assess measures concurrently are required.

The influence of time attitudes profile membership on mental well-being and psychosomatic symptomatology: A United Kingdom-based prospective study.

Mental well-being is of great importance for emotional, psychological and social functioning, particularly in adolescence, a period characterized by significant physical, social, and emotional changes. The extant literature examining the relationship between temporal attitudes and mental and psychosomatic health outcomes is increasing rapidly. Using Latent Transition Analysis (LTA) of Adolescent and Adult Time Inventory-Time Attitude Scale scores across three waves of data (N = 1667; 13-15 years; 42.0% female), we sought to examine the predictive power of time attitudes profile membership on mental well-being and psychosomatic symptomatology at distal wave four. Results indicated that staying in the Positive or Ambivalent profile was associated with more favorable distal outcomes at + 9 months; whereas staying in Negative or Moderately-Negative profile was strongly related to more somatic and psychological symptomatology, and lower mental well-being. Given the potential to modify time attitudes, these findings have several implications for interventions targeting adolescent mental and physical health.

The direct and indirect effect of loneliness on the development of adolescent alcohol use in the United Kingdom.

Alcohol use among adolescents in the United Kingdom (UK) remains relatively high compared to those in other European countries. The present study sought to examine both the direct and indirect effect of loneliness on drinking behavior. Participants were school children (mean age 13.5 years at Time 1) participating in a Randomized Controlled Trial in the UK, who completed a battery of questionnaires examining alcohol-use indicators, loneliness, self-efficacy and sensation seeking at Time 1 and at +12 months. Loneliness at Time 1 had a substantive, though largely indirect (i.e., via self-efficacy and sensation seeking covariates), impact on alcohol-related harm at +12 months. Furthermore, Loneliness interacted with gender in the prediction of context of alcohol use, where being female and experiencing loneliness put an individual at a greater risk of unsupervised drinking. Females experiencing loneliness were also 2.9 times as likely to have had a drink in the past 30 days, and around 2.5 times as likely to have ever consumed a full drink, when compared to their male peers. The current results indicate that loneliness is an important but complex factor in adolescent drinking. There are important implications for the development of interventions to prevent underage drinking, not least that it is not appropriate to consider all underage drinkers as socially marginalised. However, for those that are, the self-medication hypothesis is potentially relevant through emotional self-efficacy.