German senior citizens’ capabilities for physical activity: a qualitative study

Abstract

Sen’s capability approach (CA) has found its way into health promotion over the last few years. The approach takes both individual factors as well as social and environmental conditions into account and therefore appears to have great potential to explore opportunities for (‘capabilities’) and barriers to active lifestyles. Thus, our objective in this study was to investigate which capabilities senior citizens perceive to have available to them in order to be physically active. In Southern Germany, we conducted 26 semi-standardized interviews with senior citizens aged 66–97, as well as 9 interviews with key persons who have close contact to senior citizens in their work life. We identified 11 capabilities which the interviewees considered as important in leading an active lifestyle. They could be grouped into four domains: (1) individual resources, (2) social interactions and norms, (3) living conditions and (4) organizational environment. Results highlight the need for health-promoting interventions that widen the range of capabilities on social and environmental levels in a way that individuals can freely choose to be as physically active as they like. The results make clear that interventions should not only target and involve older adults themselves, but also their families, nursing home staff or community representatives, because these groups are important in shaping older adults’ capabilities for an active lifestyle.

Measuring capabilities in health and physical activity promotion: a systematic review.

“…All identi ed questionnaires use subjective/self-assessment measures to assess capabilities. Among the qualitative tools, only Sauter et al [26] provided details on the development process: Their interview guidelines were the result of literature screening and a conscious selection of speci c items from the OCAP questionnaire [19]. The identi ed questionnaires were developed using different methodologies.…”

“…The analysis revealed a great degree of methodological variation regarding the development of the interview guidelines and questionnaires. Some studies approached the development from a more philosophical view and based their interview guideline [26] or questionnaire items [19,22] on Martha Nussbaum's capability criteria [27]; others used an explorative approach, conducting focus-group [24,25] or key-expert interviews [15,16] to inductively develop their questionnaire. Another research group developed the questionnaire based solely on expert-group's opinion [22].…”

“…However, only two of the identi ed measurement instruments explicitly address PA, i.e. the CADA questionnaire [25] and the interview-based tool by Sauter et al [26]. However, CADA is not geared exclusively at PA but combines it with capabilities for healthy diet.…”

“…A similar pattern can be for the qualitative tools: While Ndmoto et al [46] focus on general capabilities for health, Abu-Zaineh et al [48] explicitly deal with capabilities for health and self-management diabetes patients. Sauter et al [26] is the only qualitative tool with a focus on capabilities for PA as an health-promoting factor.…”

“…The qualitative tools do not explicitly address capabilities for PA. The only exception is Sauter et al [26], which speci cally asks for the individual (e.g. knowledge about PA), social (e.g.…”