Adolescent Girls and Their Parents’ Perception of Exercise Habit Barriers

Introduction: Despite the importance of physical activity and exercise for lifelong health, involvement in physical activity declines during adolescence, particularly for girls. Identifying barriers of physical activity habit helps researchers to design better and more effective interventions for participation in exercise and physical activity. This study was designed to explore barriers of physical activity habit in adolescent girls. Method: A qualitative study was conducted by means of semi-structured interviews with twenty five participants (adolescents, mothers, and fathers). The interviews were tape-recorded transcribed verbatim and analyzed through qualitative content analysis. Results: Two main themes emerged as exercising habit barriers in adolescent girls: explicit restraints, implicit restraints. Conclusion: This study provided a better understanding of exercising habit barriers in adolescent girls that is often missing from quantitative work. Identifying and removing barriers can help researches to develop exercising habit which has a main role in human health promotion.

Keywords:

Exercise habit , Adolescent girls , Barriers , content analysis