Promoting physical activity for disabled people who are ready to become physically active: A systematic review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2017.08.010Get rights and content

Highlights

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    We need more longitudinal studies to determine the causality between physical activity and variables such as self-efficacy.

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    Researchers should consider also describing the participant's stage of intention.

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    Behaviour change techniques such as action planning should be included as elements in intervention studies.

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    Researchers need to provide a clearer description of the content of the physical activity interventions.

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    Researchers need to conduct more community led research to meet the needs of people and improve successful implementation.

Abstract

Objective

To provide an overview of which psychosocial factors are related to physical activity participation for disabled people who intend to be active, to determine which interventions effectively improved physical activity and to identify how participants were described as intenders.

Design

A systematic review was conducted using PRISMA guidelines.

Method

Six databases were searched using MesH terms and free texts. Inclusion criteria were studies focusing on disabled people, physical activity and intention. Exclusion criteria were studies not including disabled people, focusing on children or on biomechanical or neurological aspects of physical activity. Included studies were appraised using the quality tool by Sirriyeh et al, 2012 and were coded using the behaviour change technique (BCT) taxonomy by Michie et al. (2011). BCTs were considered effective if they were present in at least 50% of the effective studies included in this review and only present in one of the non-effective studies, as described in Hynynen et al. (2016).

Results

Twenty studies were included in this review. Self-efficacy, intention and weighing pros and cons were positively associated with physical activity, whereas experiencing barriers and severity of the impairment were negatively associated. Intervention studies reported BCTs such as self-monitoring of behaviour, barrier identification/problem solving and action planning as effective elements of interventions.

Conclusions

Future research should consider including the above mentioned techniques as well as additional BCTs to provide better insight in effective elements promoting physical activity of disabled intenders. We close with a series of recommendations for future research.

Section snippets

Method

The protocol used for this systematic review was the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses guidelines (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, Altman, & PRISMA Group, 2009).

Study selection

A total of 1808 studies were identified in the search with 374 duplicates. After the evaluation of the titles, 278 studies were included to the abstract stage. From the 278 abstracts, 45 studies were included for the full text stage. Two articles were excluded from the full text stage because the full text of the studies was unavailable, despite attempts to retrieve the studies from other libraries or by contacting the authors. Another 26 articles were excluded because these did not meet the

Discussion based on results

The first purpose of this original systematic review was to provide an overview of what psychosocial factors are related to physical activity participation for disabled people who are intenders. Positive associations with physical activity were self-efficacy, intention and weighing pros and cons, while experiencing barriers and the severity of the impairment were negatively associated. However the majority of the studies that reported these results used a cross-sectional design in determining

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the English Federation of Disability Sport and the National Disability Sport Organisations under Grant number 16-0403.

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