Physical Activity Participation and Related Attitudes in Cisgender Queer and Heterosexual Emerging Adults

Background: Higher levels of physical activity (PA) have consistently been found to lower cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Despite this, recent studies have identified that queer people are less likely to participate in PA than their heterosexual peers, and are more likely to have hypertension, the leading risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. As such, we investigated the participation in and attitudes about PA in a cohort of cisgender queer and heterosexual emerging adults. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that queer emerging adults would have lower participation in PA, and report less excitement and interest in PA than their heterosexual peers. Methods: We surveyed 43 emerging adults (mean age 21 ± 2) at Boston University who identified as cisgender heterosexual or queer men or women (women: n = 17 heterosexual and n = 12 queer; men n = 7 queer and n = 7 heterosexual). Participant demographics were identified using a demographic intake survey. Participants were then given a PA participation and attitude survey and asked to self-report minutes per week and days per week of aerobic and strength based physical activity, as well as questions about their attitudes towards physical activity which used a Likert-like scale (range 1-5, 5 being highest). Results: Two-way ANOVA with post hoc Tukey’s test revealed no statistically significant difference in minutes of aerobic exercise per week (p = 0.1075) or minutes of strength training per week (p = 0.7016) as a function of gender identity or sexual orientation, as well as no differences in self-reported perception of their own physical fitness (p = 0.7749). Queer men reported significantly lower scores than heterosexual men on a Likert-like scale question asking if they looked forward to PA (p = 0.0245, queer men mean 3.5, heterosexual men mean 4.7). Additionally, queer participants as a whole were more likely than heterosexual participants to agree that they disliked PA (p = 0.0129; queer mean 2.2, heterosexual mean 1.6). Conclusions: This pilot study demonstrates there may be sexual orientation and gender dependent differences in attitudes regarding PA. These different attitudes may affect longitudinal participation in PA and risk for discontinuation in queer people. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.