Measurement of perceived barriers to physical activities: Proposed research instrument

Resumen

Currently, one of the most-investigated subjects that Physical Education scientists are researching consists of themes related to human behavior (change of patterns, habits related to the health, lifestyle, beliefs and attitudes, motivation for physical activity, perception of barriers). The aim of the present article is to propose an objective instrument (questionnaire) to be used in research into human behavior, especially related to the perception of barriers to the practice of physical activity. The study used a sample of 42 adults (22 women and 20 men) and had the following methodological design: preliminary test-retest with one week interval, reformulation of the instrument, final test-retest with one week interval. The reliability of the proposed barriers was initially evaluated using the Kappa index and Pearson Product Moment correlations. Testing of the instrument demonstrated that the proposed questionnaire (a list of nineteen barriers evaluated in ordinal scale) can be easily employed, due to its applicability and quite satisfactory clarity, in addition to offering a reproducibility index of adequate reliability.