predictors of physical activity among individuals with spinal cord injuries
abstract
this study used the theoretical framework of pender's health promotion model (hpm)
to predict physical activity patterns in a sample of spinal cord injured (sci). the model
was adapted to better fit the population under study by including coping style, level of
lesion and weight as individual characteristics and physical self-efficacy as a behaviour-specific
cognition. the relationships of personal factors, coping strategies, social
support, barriers to action, and physical self-efficacy were explored. a sample of 33
respondents who had either quadriplegia (19) or paraplegia (14) completed the study
instruments. there were 29 males and 4 females with a mean age of 40.5 years and a
mean age of injury of 24 years. participants completed each of six instruments
including; physical self-efficacy (pse) and its two subscales perceived physical ability
(ppa) and physical self-presentation confidence (pspc); exercise benefits barrier
scale (ebbs); jalowiec coping scale (jcs); personal resource questionnaire (prq-
85); leisure time exercise questionnaire (lteq); and a personal inventory for
demographic and health risk information. it was hypothesized that high physical self
efficacy, few barriers to action, and high social support would be positively related to
involvement in physical activity, and conversely, that high lesion levels (quadriplegia),
overweight and use of an affective coping style would relate to low involvement in
physical activity. results of the present study provide some support for applying the
adapted model of health promotion to explain the physical activity patterns of people
with sci. participation in moderate, strenuous, sweat inducing and total weekly physical
activity was moderately correlated to high levels of both ppa and pse. a clear but
weaker relationship was also shown between few perceived barriers to participation and involvement in mild, strenuous and total weekly physical activity. in addition, severity of
impairment or comparison of activity level to lesion level indicated that paraplegics were
more involved in strenuous activity than quadriplegics. no relationship was found
between level of social support or affective copying style and physical activity. the
strongest predictors of physical activity were high ppa and short time since injury (tsi).
sixty-seven percent of the variance in participation in strenuous activity was accounted
for by ppa (38%), height (15%) and age (14%). fifty-five percent of the variance in total
weekly activity (lteq) was explained by ppa (35%), tsi (11%) and stiffness and
soreness (9%). fifty-one percent of the variance in mild activity was explained by tsi
(36%) and pspc (15%) and 48% of moderate exercise was explained by tsi (34%)
and ppa (14%). as a consequence of this investigation, a revised model of health
promotion was presented. it was concluded that those people with sci who adopt an
active approach to health promotion are young, recently injured, have a high ppa and
are paraplegic. it was recommended that rehabilitation practices concentrate on
increasing physical self efficacy and empowerment through the use of situation-specific
learning environments and a variety of activities that have a life span approach.
collections
- retrospective theses [1604]