Exercise and physical activity: an analysis of answers to an open-ended survey question

In this paper 708 comments made in response to an open-ended question at the end of a lifestyle survey are analysed in order to explore issues in exercise behaviour. Quantitative and qualitative techniques are used. Five areas are identified as important in shaping people's exercise behaviour: 1) Health-related factors; 2) Factors related to available facilities; 3) Issues of behavioural change; 4) Issues of health information and promotion; and 5) Miscellaneous issues. Each of the five areas of responses is discussed and related to current theory on exercise behaviour. Three substantive conclusions are drawn. Firstly, environmental change might be important to people but not necessarily in a personalized way. Secondly, health problems are an important barrier to exercising. Thirdly, health promotion possibly targets sedentary individuals too much. With regard to the methodology, the open-ended question proves to yield interesting information. However, a single powerful factor cannot be found in the data and the data seems to suffer from a problem of low-explained variance.