This paper qualitatively examines environmental factors operating as barriers and/or facilitators to participation in physical activity (PA) of people with physical disabilities. Interview data were collected from 27 Spanish university students through the innovative method of two-on-one interviews. Thereafter, data were subject to a flexible thematic analysis. Three themes were constructed: associations; PA practice spaces; and nonhumans. Concepts from different theories were used to generate meaningful interpretations around each theme. Drawing on our results, we offer several reflections and directions. Two key messages can be highlighted. First, environmental barriers and facilitators are context dependent and thus do not precede the circumstances in which they emerge. Second, Spanish universities should work harder to become relevant PA promoting environments for students with physical disability. The knowledge generated in this study is expected to inform the design, implementation and evaluation of programs promoting PA among Spanish university students with physical disability.

No abstract

The spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has transformed many aspects of people’s daily life, including sports. Social networks have been flooded on these issues. The present study aims to analyze the tweets produced relating to sports and COVID-19. From the end of January to the beginning of May 2020, over 4,000,000 tweets on this subject were downloaded through the Twitter search API. Once the duplicates, replicas, and retweets were removed, 119,253 original tweets were analyzed. A quantitative–qualitative content analysis was used to study the selected tweets. Posts dynamics regarding sport and exercise evolved according to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, shifting from considering sport as a healthy bastion to an activity exposed to disease like any other. Most media professional sporting events received great attention on Twitter, while grassroots and women’s sport were relegated to a residual role. The analysis of the 30 topics identified focused on the social, sporting, economic and health impact of the pandemic on the sport. Sporting cancellations, leisure time and socialization disruptions, club bankruptcies, sports training and athletes’ uncertain career development were the main concerns. Although general health measures appeared in the tweets analyzed, those addressed to sports practice were relatively scarce. Finally, this study shows the importance of Twitter as a means of conveying social attitudes towards sports and COVID-19 and its potential to generate alternative responses in future stages of the pandemic.

Background Screen time can play a significant role in the health and quality of life of people with disabilities. However, there is a lack of studies on this issue among people with disabilities, and even fewer in the university setting. Thus, the aim of our study was to explore the relationships between screen time, disability grade, body mass index (BMI), physical activity and sociodemographic variables (gender and socioeconomic status) in university students with different disabilities. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 1091 students with disabilities from 55 Spanish universities. Instruments used for data gathering were the Adolescent Sedentary Activity Questionnaire (ASAQ) and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF). A Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) analysis was carried out to explore the relationships between the variables under study. Results Participants reported high values in overall screen time (5.45 h per day/week), with computers being the media most used (2.45 h per day/week). The SOM analysis showed slightly higher screen time values in women than men. People with a high disability grade spent less screen time than those with lower disability grade. Contradictory results exist when a group of men with the highest BMI had the highest screen time and the lowest physical activity (PA) while women with low BMI show the highest screen time and PA. Conclusions Gender and disability grade played a moderating role in screen time among people with disabilities while BMI and PA do not play such a role.

University settings are socio-environmental contexts that can reduce health disparities in students with disabilities. Therefore, the aim of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the longitudinal physical activity (PA) changes of Spanish university students with disabilities during a three-year period; and (b) to identify the accomplishment of the World Health Organization’s PA recommendations in this period. A three-year follow-up cohort study was conducted on 355 university students with disabilities (172 men, 183 women). The participants completed an electronic survey on PA after which a descriptive analysis, longitudinal (Wilcoxon tests) and cross-sectional pairwise comparisons (Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests) were performed on non-normal data. The results show no significant PA changes during the three-year period. The cross-sectional comparisons between the waves presented a reduction in vigorous PA according to sex and similar values by age, origin of disability, and socioeconomic status. A global reduction of 0.6% was found in achieving the recommendations between the waves. We also found an increase of 5.3% in the participants classified as overweight–obese during this period. The findings offered in this study have important implications for university disability care services and sports services. University policies should focus on rethinking PA and sports programs for students with disabilities.

It is currently difficult to have a global state of the art vision of certain scientific topics. In the field of physical activity (PA) and exercise, this is due to information overload. The present study aims to provide a solution by analysing a large mass of scientific articles using text mining (TM). The purpose was to analyse what is being investigated in the PA health field on young people from primary, secondary and higher education. Titles and abstracts published in the Web of Science (WOS) database were analysed using TM on 24 November 2020, and after removing duplicates, 85,368 remained. The results show 9960 (unique) words and the most frequently used bi-grams and tri-grams. A co-occurrence network was also generated. ‘Health’ was the first term of importance and the most repeated bi-grams and tri-grams were ‘body_mass’ and ‘body_mass_index’. The analyses of the 20 topics identified focused on health-related terms, the social sphere, sports performance and research processes. It also found that the terms health and exercise have become more important in recent years.

No abstract

BACKGROUND The spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has transformed many aspects of people’s daily life, including sport, and social networks have been flooded on these issues. OBJECTIVE The present study aims to analyse the tweets that were produced relating to sports and COVID-19. METHODS From the end of January to the beginning of May 2020, over 4,000,000 tweets on this subject were downloaded through the Twitter search API. Once the duplicates, replicas, and retweets were removed, 119,253 original tweets were analysed. A quantitative-qualitative content analysis was used to study the selected tweets. RESULTS Posts dynamics regarding sport and exercise evolved according to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, shifting from considering sport as a healthy bastion to an activity exposed to disease as any other. The most mediatic professional sporting events received great attention in Twitter while grassroots and women’s sport were relegated to a residual role. The analysis of the 30 topics identified focused on the social, sporting, economic and health impact of the pandemic on sport. Sporting cancellations, leisure time and socialization disruptions, clubs’ bankruptcy, sport training and athletes’ uncertain career development were issues of main concern. CONCLUSIONS Although general health measures appeared in the tweets analysed, those addressed to sport practice were relatively scarce. Finally, this study shows the importance of Twitter as a means of conveying social attitudes towards sports and COVID-19 as well as its potential to generate alternative responses in future stages of the pandemic. CLINICALTRIAL NaN