Journal of Health Care Communications Open Access

Physical exercise enjoyment and relationship with sociodemographic characteristics among adults in Malaysia

14^th Edition of International Conference on Health & Primary Care

May 28-29, 2018 London, UK

Waqar Al-Kubaisy, Zaliha Ismail, Mariam Mohamad, Mazin Al-Rubaey and Nik Nairan Waqar A. Al-Kubaisy, PhD

Department of Population Health and Preventive Medicine Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Healthc Commun

Abstract:

Background: Regular physical exercises have been documented to benefit an individual’s physical, mental, and social well-being. Many factors have been associated with practising exercise regularly, and enjoyment is a key factor. Thus, despite physical tiredness and exhaustion experienced during exercise, many people still do regular exercise. Objectives: To investigate the relationship between feeling of enjoyment during physical exercise performance and sociodemographic factors. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted at five recreational areas in Shah Alam. A total of 495 adults were interviewed while exercising in these areas using a reliable and valid questionnaire. In addition to socio-demographic information, 13 items referring to various kinds of enjoyment felt were included in the questionnaire. Each item of feeling enjoyment measured by a seven-point scale, from (1) strongly negative to (7) strongly positive feeling. Median score of all the 13 items was used as the  dependent variable versus each sociodemographic factor. Results: The total median and interquartile range (IQR) score for 13 items was 84.5 (14). The median (IQR) score was significantly higher for feeling of enjoyment, among male–86 (13), ever married–87 (12), education of less than college–84 (15) and un-employed–86 (16); whereas, smoking and co-morbidity status showed insignificance. Spearman’s correlation showed a significant correlation of enjoyment with the age, r=0.208, p<0.001. No correlation was found either with BMI or household income. Conclusion: Feeling of enjoyment during exercise performance has a significant relationship with an individuals’ age, gender, marital status, education level and employment status. Active promotion of regular exercise should therefore be focused more on all groups of the population. waqar_abd@yahoo.co.uk