Parents' Beliefs About Physical Activity for Their Children With Visual Impairments

Physical activity of children with visual impairments: intentions and behaviors of parents post intervention

PURPOSE

Physical activity (PA) can provide multiple benefits for children with visual impairments (VI). To date, little research has explored the retention effects of PA interventions for children with VI. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the PA experiences of parents of children with VI three months after completing a PA intervention.

METHOD

This descriptive-qualitative study was situated in the Theory of Planned Behavior. Five parents completed semi-structured interviews that were transcribed and analyzed using a thematic line-by-line analysis.

RESULTS

Four themes characterizing how parents created PA opportunities for their children with VI were constructed: (a) Teaching from Awareness (b) Advocating for Needs, (c) Engaging Family through Community, and (d) Seeking More PA Opportunities.

CONCLUSION

Parent's awareness of their child's abilities, parents' advocacy, and parents' teaching skills all helped to expose their children to new types of PA in the community. Parents reflected about a lack of consistently offered community-based PA for their children. Researchers must consider the importance of educating parents on how to teach skills, increase awareness, and advocate for more community-based PA programs.

Blind sports’ blind spot: The global epidemiology of visual impairment against participation trends in elite blind para sport

Background: It remains unknown whether access to elite blind sports opportunities is globally balanced or matches the prevalence of blindness/visual impairment (VI). The primary objective of this study was to determine the rate of elite blind sports participation in each world region registered in the International Blind Sports Federation’s (IBSA) and to assess its association with the global and regional prevalence of blindness/VI. The secondary objective was to determine the association between other covariates, such as age, vision class, and sex, with the number of IBSA-registered athletes from each region.

Methods: A baseline estimate of blindness/VI data was established and used when comparing participation rates to blindness/VI rates. Descriptive statistics were used to describe sports participation and associated co-variates.

Results: Among 123 member countries registered in IBSA, 31 did not have any completed registrations in blind sports, of which 22 had a prevalence of blindness/VI higher than the global average. During the summer season 2019, 738 (29.52%) IBSA athletes were female and 1762 (70.48%) were male.

Conclusions: These results suggest elite blind/VI sport participation is limited independently from blindness/VI prevalence. Increasing blind-friendly sport resources, especially in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs), would improve the rate of elite sport participation among athletes with blindness/VI.

Physical activity, nutrition, and psychological well-being among youth with visual impairments and their siblings

PURPOSE

The primary purpose of this study was to examine physical activity, nutritional intake, and psychological well-being differences between youth with visual impairments and their siblings residing in the same household. A secondary purpose was to examine the relationship between physical activity behavior and psychological well-being among youth with visual impairments.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A sample of 22 dyads of youth with visual impairments and siblings completed this study. Data were collected through parent-reported demographic and psychological well-being questionnaires, nutritional intake questionnaires, and accelerometry. Data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially, examining proportion difference using McNemar's z-test, and mean differences using multivariate analyses of variance.

RESULTS

Siblings without visual impairments had higher but not significantly higher daily average moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (d = 0.46), significantly higher prosocial score (d = 0.63), and lower but not significantly lower difficulty scores (d = 0.39), than youth with visual impairments. Small, not statistically significant, nutritional intake differences between siblings were found.

CONCLUSIONS

Differences in physical activity and nutritional habits between those with visual impairments and their siblings were not significant, supporting the environmentally driven nature of these variables. Associations between physical activity and well-being were not apparent in this study but may be partially explained by low participant physical activity.Implications for RehabilitationYouth with visual impairments and the siblings may be influenced by the same familial factors and molded in a similar fashion by parenting behaviors regarding health-related behaviors.In this study, youth with visual impairments engaged in similar physical activity and nutritional behaviors to their siblings without visual impairments.Efforts to improve health-related behaviors among those with visual impairments may be most effective at the family level.Small subsets of youth with visual impairments gain mental health benefits from physical activity engagement.