Investigation of perceptions of individuals with disabilities about participation in exercise

This study has been carried out in order to determine how disabled individuals perceive physical exercise participation. The study has been conducted in the associations for the disabled people, sports clubs and rehabilitation centers in Ankara. The participants were orthopedically disabled ,visually and/or hearing impaired men and women between the ages of 18-69. In total, 321 disabled individuals took part in the research, 145 (45,2%) of whom were female and 176 (54,8%) were male. 143 (44,5%) of the participants were orthopedically disabled, 105 (32,7%) were visually impaired and 73 (22,7%) had hearing disability. In order to determine the participants' the perception of physical exercise, the "Exercise Benefits/Barriers Scale (EBBS)", developed by Sechrist, Walker and Pender (1987), have been used. In the analysis of the obtained data, ANOVA was performed for unpaired t-test for sub-problems consisting of 2 independent groups and mean difference test for sub-problems consisting of more than 2 independent groups. Before performing ANOVA, homogeneity of variance was checked by Levene test. In addition, Kruskal Wallis test was used to determine which group caused the difference (p <0.05). As a result, it can be said that perceptions of orthopedic, visually and hearing disabled individuals living in Ankara regarding exercise participation differ according to gender, age, type of disability and whether or not to exercise.