A Qualitative Exploration of Immigrant Muslim Older Adults’ Experiences and Perceptions of Physical Activity

Abstract

Physical activity is essential for healthy aging; however, there has been little exploration of physical activity in Muslim older immigrants in Canada. Over one million Canadians identify as Muslim, the majority is first-generation immigrants, with increasing cohorts entering older age. A community-based participatory research project on healthy aging was conducted with 68 older adults and community members from South Asian, Arab, and African Muslim ethnocultural communities in a Canadian urban center. A combination of individual interviews and focus groups discussions were completed, followed by thematic analysis of data. Participating community groups emphasized the importance of physical activity in older age and prioritized the need for physical activity programs. The four themes highlight Muslim older immigrants’ perspectives on physical activity in Canada: (a) values and approaches to staying active; (b) health factors: pain and health limitations; (c) social factors: culture, religion, and belonging; and (d) environmental factors: safety and accessibility.

A systematic review of qualitative studies exploring the factors influencing the physical activity levels of Arab migrants

“…For all studies, there was a clear aim, the qualitative methodology was deemed appropriate, they were deemed to have used appropriate research designs with justification, ethical issues had been considered, and there were clear statements regarding the findings. Most studies used appropriate recruitment methods (87%) [29, 30, 32-34, 36-41, 43, 44], and had rigorous methods of data analysis (87%) [29,30,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]44]. Only seven studies (47%) reported on or provided sufficient detail in order to determine if the relationship between the researcher and participants had been considered [29, 32 ,34, 35, 37, 39, 40].…”

“…The studies were published between 1998 [43] and 2020 [29,39]. Five studies were conducted in Australia [29,30,36,41,43], three in the US [33,38,42], three in the Netherlands [34,37,44], three in Sweden [32,35,40], and one in Canada [39]. The target population of the 15 studies included Arab migrant groups from the Middle East and North Africa, with a total of five studies exclusively focusing on Arab migrant samples [29,33,35,38,42].…”

“…A commonly used approach to recruitment was to target community [29, 30, 34, 37-40, 43, 44] and religious centres and organisations [29,34,37,39,42,44]. The sample sizes of Arabs in the included studies ranged from 11 [32] to 45 [43].…”

“…The sample sizes of Arabs in the included studies ranged from 11 [32] to 45 [43]. A total of seven studies included both men and women [29,33,35,37,39,41,44], seven studies focused exclusively on women [30,32,34,36,40,42,43], and one study focused on men [38].…”

“…Ten studies employed focus groups for data collection [29, 30, 32-35, 37, 40, 41, 44], two studies used interviews [36,38], and three studies used a combination of both focus groups and interviews [39,42,43]. The interviews and focus group duration ranged from 30 [38] to 180 min [44].…”