Physical activity context preferences of HIV-positive individuals at United Bulawayo hospitals

Abstract

Aim: the aim of the research was to determine the physical activity context preferences of HIV-positive individuals at United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH). Objectives: the objectives of the research were to identify the physical activity format, location and social setting preferences of HIV-positive individuals at UBH. We also wanted to determine the association between physical activity context preferences and self-reported health status. Methodology: the research team had 109 participants at UBH’s opportunistic infections clinic taking part in the study. Besides responding to socio-demographic questions, they also indicated, on a Likert scale, the extent of agreement or disagreement with a preference for each of the 19 contexts relating to format, location and social setting. One of the questions on the socio-demographic section requested them to rate their health status. Descriptive statistics were used to describe, organise and summarise data and they included frequencies and percentages for categorical data, descriptions of central tendency (mean) and descriptions of relative position (range and standard deviation) for continuous data. Kendall’s tau b analysis was done to determine if there was an association between the preference for the 19 physical activity contexts and self-reported health status. Results: the respondents agreed with a preference for all the physical activity contexts except for activities that are vigorous or involve competition. There was no association between the preferences for all the 19 physical activity contexts and self-reported health status except the preference for activities that are done with people of the same gender. Conclusion and recommendations: policy makers and healthcare practitioners should take note of the preferred physical activity contexts by HIV-positive individuals. Future investigations should explore the stage of HIV infection so that physical activity context preferences at every stage of the disease are known. Future studies should also include members of the society who are economically advantaged as most of the participants live below the poverty datum level.