exercise as a healthpromoting lifestyle choice the primary purpose of this exploratory study was to examine differences between exercisers and nonexercisers in selfesteem perceived benefits of exercise and perceived barriers to exercise second we investigated how much variation in group membership as an exerciser or nonexerciser could be explained by the relationship among selfesteem perceived benefits of exercise and perceived barriers to exercise a sample of 105 university students completed four questionnaires using t tests a significant difference was found between exercisers and nonexercisers on selfesteem perceived benefits of exercise and perceived barriers to exercise it was found that the three variables successfully accounted for 32 of the variation in group membership as an exerciser or nonexerciser