Marthammuthu, Thaneswaran and Mohd Hairi, Farizah and Choo, Wan Yuen and Salleh, Nur Afiqah Mohd and Hairi, Noran Naqiah (2021) A qualitative investigation on the roles of social support on physical activity behaviour among the rural-dwelling older women in Malaysia. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18 (18). ISSN 1660-4601, DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32381-9.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Despite many health benefits of physical activities, both physically and mentally, the majority of the older women in the rural areas of Malaysia are showing a low prevalence of physical activities. Understanding the roles of social support to improve physical activities is imperative to promote active and healthy ageing among the rural-dwelling older women in Malaysia. Hence, this qualitative study adopted an inductive design using 17 in-depth interviews to understand the role of social support on physical activity behaviour among the rural community-dwelling older woman in Kuala Pilah District, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia from December 2019 to January 2020. Three categories of themes were identified in this study. Firstly, adaptive social support in terms of informational, companionship and emotional supports reported enhancing physical activity levels among older women. Secondly, the absence of help and assistance from the social network asserts independence and triggers the older women to perform the activities by themselves, thus engage in physically active lifestyles. Thirdly, lacking social support demotivate older women to be engaged in physical activities. In particular, loss of companionship support, poor acceptance or appraisal support, logistic issues to attend exercise programmes and neighbourhood safety and security issues were among the main barriers of physical activities reported by the older women. The main findings of this study shed some light on the exigency of strengthening social support from the social network to engage the older women in physical activities. The roles of social media, effective patient-doctor communication and interventions targeting the spouses and family members must be strengthened to create a supportive atmosphere to enhance physical activity levels among older women.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Funders: | Ministry of Higher Education High Impact Research STeMM grant (E000010-20001), University of Malaya Grant Challenge (PEACE) (GC001A14HTM) (GC001D-14HTM) |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Older women; Physical activity; Qualitative; Rural; Social support |
| Subjects: | R Medicine > R Medicine (General) R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Medicine |
| Depositing User: | Ms. Juhaida Abd Rahim |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Feb 2022 03:58 |
| Last Modified: | 24 Feb 2022 03:58 |
| URI: | http://eprints.um.edu.my/id/eprint/26817 |
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