‘An examination of the perspectives of autistic adults about their engagement in physical activity’

Abstract

Emerging research suggests that physical activity (PA) participation with autistic adults is low. Despite this fact, little is known about why their PA participation is low. The low participation rates among autistic adults is problematic given that PA participation can confer numerous physical, mental, and social benefits. To date, autistic adults perspectives have been absent from PA research, and there is paucity of research examining how intrapersonal processes interconnect with interpersonal, environmental and policy-level processes to shape their PA participation. In this study, seventeen autistic adults participated in two online semi-structured interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to organize the data and interpreted further by the social ecological model. The study findings highlight that sensory sensitivities, the personal trainer's style of coaching, and trust were important interconnected processes that shaped autistic adults PA participation. The study findings are significant because they illuminate that PA participation was not a behaviour solely influenced by intrapersonal processes such as motivation or self-concept. Rather, for the autistic adults in this study, sensory sensitivities, the personal trainer's style of coaching, and trust were interconnected to influence, hinder, and/or shape PA participation. This interconnected understanding of PA participation among autistic adults described in this study provides a valuable contribution to the field of autism research as it highlights the need to understand the multi-level processes associated with PA participation. The results of this work suggest that future research should focus on how the multi-level processes associated with PA among autistic adults interconnect to shape PA participation rather than focusing on how these processes function independently to shape PA participation.