Intervention
The self-efficacy enhancing intervention was modeled after an intervention developed by McAuley et al for a seniors’ walking program.9 The self-efficacy enhancing sessions were designed to promote self-efficacy for upper body strength training and PA in daily life by maximizing all four sources of self-efficacy as described by Bandura. To optimize the mas-tery experience, staff provided feedback, graphed subjects’ progress, and assisted subjects to recall their progress. Vicarious experience was provided using video clips of other people doing upper body resistance training and talking about the new activities that they were doing and activities they were able to do with greater ease at home. We also mounted posters in the laboratory demonstrating older people exercis-ing and having fun. Verbal and social persuasion experiences were provided by emphasizing the individual’s capacity to perform upper body resistance training early in the program and reinforcing observed improvements later in the program. We organized buddy groups of two to three people each, and instructed them to contact each other on the weekends and to call each other if they could not make it to class. We encouraged subjects to measure success as self-improvement and to avoid comparing themselves with others. We helped subjects interpret their physiological and affective states by explaining that it is normal to experience shortness of breath and an increase in heart rate while exercising, and it is normal to experience fatigue and initial muscle soreness after exercising. A detailed description of the self-efficacy enhancing intervention is available upon request from the first author of this paper.