Abstract:

The aim of this study was to investigate the perceived benefit/barrier perceptions of individuals with disabilities. A total of 321 disabled individuals, N = 145 (45.2%) female, N = 176 (54.8%) male, participated in the study. Among these disabilities, N = 143 (44.5%) orthopedically impaired, N = 105 (32.7%) visually impaired, N = 73 (22.7%) hearing impaired individuals (aged 18-69.) In order to determine the participants' perceptions about exercise, the “Exercise Benefits/Barriers Scale (EBBS)” developed by Sechrist, Walker, and Pender (1987) was used. EBBS included 43 items with 29-item benefit and 14-item barrier sub-dimensions. To understand whether the data obtained from the scales show normal distribution or not, the Shapiro-Wilk normality test was applied first (p>0.05). T-test and ANOVA tests were used for the analysis of obtained data. Also, the post-hoc test was used to determine which group caused the difference in multiple comparisons. Aside from these, multiple regression analysis was used to determine the role of individuals' age, gender, and disability types on their perceptions of exercise. Perceptions of disabled individuals on participating in the exercise were found to differ significantly in both sub-dimensions (benefit and barrier sub-dimensions) according to gender, age, and exercising or not (p<0.05). There was a significant difference in the benefit sub-dimension of participants' perceptions of participating into exercise according to disability types (p<0.05), at the same time there was no difference in exercise perceptions of individuals with visual, hearing, and orthopedic disabilities related to disability sub-dimension (p>0.05). In conclusion, it could be said that perceptions of orthopedically, visually, and hearing-impaired individuals related to participating in exercise differed according to gender, age, type of disability, and exercising or not.

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