The cross-sectional data were drawn from the Autumn 2024 baseline evaluation of the GHP quasi-experimental study. The GHP¹ is delivered among approximately 10,000 students from 48 public schools distributed in 9 administrative regions of Quebec (Canada). GHP aims to guide students toward long-term behavior change through two educational content strategies: (i) offering outdoor-oriented activities and (ii) developing components integrated into school subjects (nutrition, life balance and stress management, human body, and first aid). These contents are integrated into the school curriculum aiming to contribute to the students’ overall well-being.

Baseline sample includes 658 students aged 6 to 17 years. All forty-eight schools enrolled in the GHP in Québec (Canada) were recruited and all GHP participants were invited to take part to the study. The invitation was sent by the Director of the GHP via email. Data were collected using an online questionnaire (Qualtrics) available in both French and English between September and November 2024. Participants provide electronic consent.

Participants were asked to report the amount of time spent doing each of the activities listed in the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Children or Adolescents (PAQ-C; PAQ-A) (Mestre and Reychler, 2021) for the past week. The PAQ-C is appropriate for elementary school-aged children (ages 6–14) who are currently in the school system and have recess as a regular part of their school week. The nine PAQ-C questions are organized using a segmented time-of-day or day-of-the-week strategy. It provides a summary PA score derived from nine items, each scored on a 5-point scale (Cronbach α = 0.79), and includes the following: In the last 7 days, what did you do most of the time at recess? (Tremblay et al., 2016) Sat down (talking, reading, doing schoolwork); (Oberle et al., 2025) Stood around or walked around; (Kuzik et al., 2025) Ran or played a little bit; (Guthold et al., 2020) Ran around and played quite a bit; (Contreras and Joubert, 2022) Ran and played hard most of the time. The PAQ-A is appropriate for high school students (approximately ages 14–20) who are currently in the school system, and it provides a summary PA score derived from eight items (no recess item), each scored on a 5-point scale, as follows: “In the last 7 d, during your physical education (PE) classes, how often were you very active (playing hard, running, jumping, throwing)?” (Tremblay et al., 2016) I do not do PE; (Oberle et al., 2025) Hardly ever; (Kuzik et al., 2025) Sometimes; (Guthold et al., 2020) Quite often; (Contreras and Joubert, 2022) Always. Responses were averaged to derive a mean score for each activity and combined to form a total PA score (between 1 and 5) (Cronbach α = 0.85).

Students’ perception of school leaders’ implication on GHP was assessed using a scale including seven items developed by the researchers and the GHP director. Items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree and includes the following: “The school leader was able to create a pleasant and enjoyable atmosphere; was dynamic and encouraged everyone’s participation during the sessions; inspires me to be physically active and have good lifestyle habits regularly.” For the descriptive analysis only, we dichotomized the final score as “Positive skills” (agree and strongly agree) and “Less positive skills (neutral, disagree and strongly disagree).

Continuous and categorical variables were descriptively summarized using means and standard deviations (SD) and percentages. Normality of continuous variables’ distributions was checked by computing their level of skewness and inspecting their QQ-plots.

Independent t-test, ANOVA and Chi-square analysis were performed to examine differences in the characteristics of participants between motivation profiles. (1) Linear regression analyses crude and adjusted for potential confounders (age, sex and mother’s education) were performed to estimate the association between students’ perception of school leaders’ implication and motivation for PA; (2) motivation for PA and PA level. To test whether this association is moderated by PA level (active vs inactive) or number of years of participation in the program (< 2y vs ≥ 3y), we then include interaction terms between school leader implication*PA level and school leader implication*years of participation in separate models.

Statistical significance was defined as p ≤ 0.05 and 95% CI are presented. All analyses were performed using IBM SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 28.0. Armonk, NY, USA) and the moderation analysis was run using the version 3.5 of PROCESS command (Hayes and Rockwood, 2017).

The Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières’ Board gave ethical approval for the conduct of the study (CER-24-309-07.04). Participating schools and students gave approval for conduct of research activities.

Results shown that three types of motivation for PA have contributed positively to PA level; intrinsic motivation, identified regulation and amotivation. However, intrinsic motivation shows the strongest association with PA level ( β ̂  = 0.31; 95%CI 0.26; 0.49). As mentioned in self-determination theory, intrinsic motivation, the most autonomous and effective form of motivation, drives an individual to perform an activity for the satisfaction it provides and not for the prospect of reward or punishment (Sarrazin et al., 2011; Alecu et al., 2025). It is important to encourage and to not interfere with intrinsic motivation with a reward, because studies show that perceiving a reward as controlling can lead to a decrease or even disappearance of intrinsic motivation (Sarrazin et al., 2011). Motivational climate also plays a major role in the perception of external influences. If school leaders are perceived as controlling rather than informative, they can hinder the need for autonomy and thus reduce intrinsic motivation. An important consideration in the results is the fact that almost all students in the program reported having autonomous motivation. It may be surprising, but it has happened in the past that students report high levels of motivation, even though teachers report dealing with demotivated students (Girard et al., 2023).

As shown in the Table 2, identified motivation (recognizing the personal importance of PA) has a weaker but significant association ( β ̂  = 0.12; 95%CI 0.02; 0.26) with PA level. Identified regulation is considered a self-determined form of extrinsic motivation that occurs when individuals recognizes the importance of the activity to achieve personal goals, so he/she participates voluntarily, even if it is not always pleasant (Ryan and Deci, 2000; Guay, 2022). At this moment, there is no pressure from the environment. It is the individuals that choose to commit for themselves to achieve meaningful personal goals. It can have a positive influence in the lasting hold of the behavior. Describing the benefits of PA on well-being and health during activities could therefore modestly contribute to the internalization of its practice. This can be easily implemented during activities, by example if leaders or participants talk about their own positive experiences related to PA. These experiences may help children and adolescents internalize the value of PA by linking it to personal goals. Students’ perception should be deepened and interventions aiming to boost PA should prioritize fostering self-determined forms, such as intrinsic motivation—for instance, by enhancing enjoyment, autonomy, and self-competence (Girard et al., 2023).

Table 2 brought also the fact that amotivation, typically negatively associated with PA (Faílde-Garrido et al., 2022; Surprenant et al., 2024), is surprisingly positively linked with increased PA level ( β ̂  = 0.16; 95%CI 0.10; 0.34). This finding may require a nuanced interpretation. A hypothesis could be made to explain that result. It is possible that students reporting amotivation are still being active due to external pressures or routine. In both cases, further qualitative research would help to clarify this paradox. As seen in Girard et al. (2023), focus groups and interviews could be more effective to identify and measure students’ motivation and perceptions.

In accordance with the previous results, students’ RAI has shown a statistically significant effect on PA level ( β ̂  = 0.13 per unit increase). However, the small magnitude suggests that composite indices like RAI may dilute the influence of specific motivational types (like intrinsic motivation). Indeed, each component is on the self-determination continuum but has its own particularities and adds information on the source of the motivation, the regulation and the level of autonomy satisfaction (Howard et al., 2017). Therefore, even if RAI is useful as a summary measure, it should not replace analyzes of individual motivational components in predicting behavior.

After having tested the role of perceived school leadership implication in promoting autonomous motivation, the regression results suggests that students who perceive greater implication from school leaders tend to have more autonomous motivation toward PA [ β ̂ = 0.26; (95%CI 0.138; 0.256)], in review was consistent with previous study highlighting the positive influence of supportive school leadership on students’ motivation for PA (Vaquero-Solís et al., 2022). Indeed, a recent study found that elementary school students who perceived higher autonomy support from their physical education teachers exhibited greater autonomous motivation toward physical activity (Vaquero-Solís et al., 2022). This increased motivation was positively associated with their intention to be physically active and their actual physical activity levels. Our finding underscores the importance of the school environment—particularly leadership attitudes and behaviors—in shaping students’ motivational profiles. Supportive school motivational climate may reinforce basic psychological needs satisfaction among youth of autonomy, which are key drivers of RAI under Self-Determination Theory (Girard et al., 2023; Ryan and Deci, 2000). Taking this into account, school leaders’ training and institutional support could be leveraged to create environments that naturally foster autonomous motivation for PA among children and adolescents, as offered by the GHP.

Regarding the non-significant result for the moderation by PA level, the lack of a significant effect (p = 0.764) suggests that the relationship between students’ perception of school leaders and RAI is not contingent on students’ current PA levels. Indeed, being active or not does not influence the direct association between perception score and RAI. This could mean that perceptions of school support influence motivation regardless of whether students are currently active or inactive, making these perceptions a universally relevant factor. The direct pathway from perceived implication to motivation appears robust and should be a focus of school-based intervention efforts—regardless of students’ initial activity levels (Ourda et al., 2025). In this sense, the GHP can achieve PA motivation for all its participants, which is very encouraging for the continuation of the program.

Another important thought for this result is that if RAI is significantly associated with students’ perception of school leaders, and RAI is also associated with higher PA, then school climate might exert an indirect effect on PA behavior via its impact on motivational quality (Jung et al., 2021). However, given the relatively small RAI effect on PA ( β ̂  = 0.13), this pathway may be limited in explanatory power in the present study.

The hypothesis that the duration of the participation in the GHP would modulate the effect of perception of school leaders’ implication on students’ RAI was not supported. Indeed, the effect of the direct association did not differ based on how long participants have been in the GHP program (< 2 years vs ≥ 3 years), as shown by a non-significant interaction (p > 0.737). This may suggest that the association between students’ perception of school leaders and RAI is relatively stable across different number of years of GHP involvement and that perceived school support influences motivation similarly across different levels of program exposure. It could reflect that even with more years of participation, the quality or consistency of support may not differ meaningfully between groups. This could also indicate that even early in the program, students develop strong perceptions of leadership support that remain stable over time. Otherwise, it could also reflect a similarity on how support is experienced across varying durations, pointing to a consistent quality of support provided to all students, regardless of how long they have been in the program. These results highlight the potentially immediate and sustained influence of perceived school leaders’ support on students’ motivation, irrespective of exposure time. School-based intervention programs need to focus not just on duration but also on the depth and quality of implementation (Ourda et al., 2025; Dowling and Barry, 2020). Future research should investigate whether there is an optimal window or threshold of exposure to such interventions rather than assuming “more is better.”

Taken together, the moderation analyses suggest that neither students’ current PA levels nor their length of participation in the GHP program significantly alter the impact of perceived school leadership implication on RAI. This consistency reinforces the idea that school leadership perceptions exert a stable influence on youth motivational quality, independent of PA status or program exposure length.

Interventions should target motivation enhancement, particularly focusing on intrinsic factors such as enjoyment, autonomy, and perceived competence. School leaders should be actively involved in promoting a need-supportive motivation climate, as seen in the GHP model. For example, schools can implement student-centered PA sessions that allow for choice, variety, and progression based on individual skill levels, which has been shown to enhance autonomous motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Leadership practices that include visible support for PA initiatives, regular communication about health goals, and shared decision-making with students can reinforce a supportive environment (Ntoumanis et al., 2021). Additionally, our baseline results suggest that tailoring PA programs based on students’ motivational profiles may enhance engagement and effectiveness. These strategies can be embedded in the regular curriculum to ensure sustainability and inclusivity.

The main strength of this study was the investigation based on a sample of participants in the same school-based intervention but in 48 different schools, which makes our results more representative. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to directly examine the association between students’ perception of school leaders and motivation for PA in a school-based intervention setting. However, several limitations should be addressed. First, the cross-sectional design of the study limits the causal interpretation of the findings. Our future ongoing longitudinal study will confirm causal pathways. Second, our dataset only used online self-report questionnaires. Although the questionnaires were all validated with similar population, without a researcher present to clarify ambiguous questions, participants may misunderstand terminology or respond based on incorrect assumptions. Third, it is important to note that integrated motivation was not included in the questionnaire. This type of self-determined motivation falls just below intrinsic motivation on the Self-Determination Theory continuum. Including it might have helped explain why some participants were autonomously motivated to engage in PA—not necessarily for the enjoyment of the activity itself, but because it aligned with their personal values and identity (Sarrazin et al., 2011). The observed association between motivation for PA and actual activity levels suggests that encouraging individuals to integrate PA into their daily lives—and helping them understand its benefits—can effectively foster autonomous forms of motivation, which are the most strongly linked to higher PA levels. Fourth, while this study was grounded solely in Self-Determination Theory to focus on individual motivational processes, we acknowledge the relevance of broader socio-ecological frameworks. These perspectives could serve as valuable complementary approaches in future research aiming to explore contextual and environmental influences on youth motivation and physical activity engagement in greater depth. Finally, although we controlled for some confounding factors in our study, such as age, sex, mother’s education level and the number of years of participation in the GHP, several important potential confounding variables were still not measured. These include socioeconomic status (e.g., household income), parental PA levels, access to recreational facilities outside of school, and psychological factors such as self-efficacy. A few studies have suggested that these variables are significantly related to both the motivation for PA and participation in intervention programs among youth (Tandon et al., 2021; de Oliveira et al., 2024; Hosokawa et al., 2023; Cohen et al., 2025). For instance, youth from higher-income households or those with physically active parents are more likely to engage in PA (de Oliveira et al., 2024; Rhodes et al., 2020), while psychological factors may either facilitate or hinder sustained engagement in PA (Rhodes et al., 2020).