Identifying different types of motivation that regulate behavior in an exercise context has been of high interest in exercise psychology science. One of the most widely used instruments for this purpose is the Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire-2 (BREQ-2; Markland & Tobin, 2004), which recently has been revised (BREQ-3, Cid et al., 2018) to include also integrated regulation. In previous work, questions have been raised about the nature of introjected regulation, suggesting it can be divided into two different types of regulations, mirroring avoidance and approach.  Therefore, BREQ-3 has been further revised to include items that measure: two facets of introjected regulation (approach and avoidance), resulting in a 28-item instrument (named BREQ-4) measuring seven types of exercise regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine: (i) the factorial structure of the new and revised instrument BREQ-4; and (ii) associations between the two newly developed facets of introjected regulation (approach and avoidance), exercise behavior and the other types of regulation in the context of exercise.

Two subsamples, one from the UK consisting of 412 younger (mean age: 21.6 years) adults recruited from various Facebook groups, and one from Sweden, consisting of 369 middle aged (mean age: 40.7) working individuals, also recruited via Facebook, were used. In both samples, data was collected online through Qualtrics. Structural equation modeling was used to examine factorial validity and associations between latent constructs of exercise regulation in BREQ-4 and self-reported exercise behavior.

Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the 28-item 7-factor model displayed acceptable fit to data in both samples. Configural and metric invariance, but not scalar invariance, between the two samples was established. Avoidance regulation was unrelated to exercise behavior in both samples, whereas approach regulation was weakly and positively associated with exercise in the UK sample. Avoidance and approach was moderately to strongly associated in both samples. In terms of patterns of associations with the other types of regulations, results were similar in both samples: avoidance was more strongly associated with extrinsic regulation whereas approach was more robustly associated with self-determined types of motivation (identified, integrated and intrinsic motivation).