Table 2

The costs of time spent on exercise expressed in percentage of wages, rated experience of exercise in relation to the leisure activity forgone and work, and ratings of the experience of the leisure activity foregone, work, and exercise on a scale from 0 (purely negative) to 100 (purely positive)

More experienced exercisers

Less experienced exercisers

P-value

Number

164

41

Cost of time (percentage of wages)

7.2%

26.3%

< 0.001

Rated experience of exercise the same as or higher than the leisure activity forgone (percentage of participants)

91.4%

72.5%

Rated experience of exercise the same as or lower than work (percentage of participants)

5.5%

22.5%

Rated experience of exercise between the leisure activity forgone and work (percentage of participants)

3.1%

5.5%

Rating of the experience of leisure activity foregone

70.3

69.1

0.74

Rating of the experience of work

75.1

68.7

< 0.05

Rating of the experience of exercise

87.2

71.5

< 0.001

Hagberg and Lindholm Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation 2010 8:9   doi:10.1186/1478-7547-8-9