Hopefulness and meaning in adults with disabilities' physical activity: A qualitative study

The body of knowledge regarding the processes involved in changing physical activity behaviors in people with disabilities is very limited. This qualitative study is a follow-up to a pilot study on an individualized health coaching intervention for adults with any type of disabilities, titled Health My Way, that used a disability-specific health-promotion curriculum. In the original study, we found that participants in the health coaching intervention experienced improved health-promoting behavior, notably physical activity. In the current follow-up study, we examined the relationships among participants' personal sense of meaning and hope and the physical activity change process.

Participants (n = 12) were a subset of participants from the original pilot study, who were adults with any type of disability, recruited by convenience sampling. These participants completed in-depth interviews to explore possible interactions among health coaching, health behavior changes (including physical activity), meaning, and hope. The curriculum-based health coaching intervention involved weekly, individual coaching for up to 12 weeks. We used thematic analysis to analyze interview data.

We identified three main themes: tapping into sources of meaning, increasing hopefulness, and hopelessness combined with lack of meaningful engagement.

In the context of health coaching for people with disabilities, identifying sources of personal meaning appears to be necessary for the initial motivation for goal-directed action regarding physical activity. Subsequent generation and maintenance of hope appear to be vital for maintaining physical activity in this population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).