Transition means moving from current situation or environment to next situation or environment. Particularly, understanding the transition from high school to university is important because declines in physical activity may be most prominent in this period(Bray & Born, 2004). During the transition into university, physical activity is declined by many factors, such as personal relationships, lack of facilities, festival, many choice, opportunity of freedom, and so on(Kwan, 2006). While many researches on physical activity during the transition have been conducted in other countries, research is needed for understanding perceptions and barriers of physical activity in Korea university students. Thus, the purposes of this study are to examine perceptions and barriers of physical activity during the transition into university in Korea.
Method:
Participants consisted of 312 freshmen students in K university located in D city in Korea and responded International Physical Activity Questionnaire(IPAQ) to identify the lowest level of physical activity. 24 students(male: 12, female: 12) were selected for conducting the focus group interviews which were divided into 6 groups composed of 4 students(male: 2, female: 2). Students were asked to sign consent form including the purpose and rationale of the study prior to the focus group interview. Then each focus group had semi-structured meeting for about an hour. Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Member checking, peer debriefing, and triangulation strategies were used for increasing data trustworthiness.
Analysis/Results:
Results showed that perception about physical activity indicated in both ways. In positive ways, participants perceived physical activity as stress relief, confident form, and personal relationships improvement. They also perceived it as negative ways such as psychological burden, cost-bearing and sense of inferiority. Results in physical activity barriers were classified into four factors. First factor was individual barriers that were lack of time due to busy university life and lack of knowledge about physical activity. Second was personal relationship barriers such as absent of friends that play with physical activity and lack of interest on physical activity at home. Third factor was social community barriers that were frequent meeting as university freshman students and active participants for department event. Last was facility environmental factor such as lack of exercise facilities.
Conclusions:
After transition into university from high school, physical activities were declined by many factors. Not only studying factors that decline freshmen’s physical activity, but also plan for conquest these barriers should be studied to promote freshmen’s insufficient physical activity.