JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Women participate in physical activity (PA) at lower rates than their male counterparts. Over the lifespan, the gap widens among women during midlife. Motivations and barriers to engaging in PA, such as walking, change with age but the influencing factors are not well understood.

Objective:

This study aims to explore how a woman’s age might influence her motivations, barriers, attitudes, and beliefs towards daily walking. It also studies attitudes towards the features of a mobile application designed for women to sync with a wearable step tracker to increase and maintain levels of daily walking

Methods:

A web-based anonymous survey was completed by 400 women, ages 21 to 75 years old. The 31-item survey was designed to capture women’s perceived barriers and motivators towards daily walking and their attitudes towards mobile health (mHealth) to support and maintain daily walking. For analysis, responses to the survey were grouped into two categories of women: ages 21 to 49 years old (<50) and ages 50 to 75 years old (50+). Bivariate analyses were conducted through SPSS for each of the survey questions using chi-squares for dichotomous variables and t-tests for scales and continuous variables to identify significant differences between the two groups. T-tests were run for scaled variables to identify significant differences between the 10-year age increments.

Results:

Statistically significant (P<.05 to P<.001) barriers to daily walking were observed in the <50 group for personal and work responsibilities, motivational and psychosocial factors, and physical and environmental factors. Motivators to walk daily in the <50 group were significantly higher for reduces stress and anxiety, and in the 50+ group was significantly higher for helps manage/lose weight and reduces risk of chronic illness. Women’s walking preferences, beliefs around their walking behaviors, and their perceived importance of the features of a future mobile application for walking designed specifically for women showed significant variation according to age. Results for questions concerning the importance of features for a mobile application showed a significantly higher number of positive responses in the <50 group for the following features: virtual community support (P<.05), rewards or point system (P<.001) and seeing a daily/weekly/monthly chart of progress (P<.001).

Conclusions:

Findings indicate that barriers, motivators, and beliefs around daily walking and the importance of features of a mobile application to increase and maintain daily walking levels vary according to women’s ages. Messaging and app features should be tailored to different age groups of women. Our study results should be viewed as a foundation to be applied to future research and development of a mobile app and other mHealth interventions to effectively increase daily walking among women of all ages.