Parental perceptions of facilitators and barriers to physical activity for children with intellectual disabilities: A mixed methods systematic review.
Parents see the same items as either roadblocks or springboards to physical activity for kids with ID, depending on how informed and welcoming the team feels.
01Research in Context
What this study did
McGarty et al. (2018) read every paper that asked parents of kids with intellectual disability what helps or hurts physical activity.
They found ten studies and grouped the answers into five buckets: family, child, program, social, and past experience.
What they found
Parents said the same thing can be a helper or a barrier depending on context.
Example: family support lifts activity when parents know what to do, but drags it down when they feel lost.
Inclusive programs help if coaches understand ID, yet become a barrier if staff seem annoyed or unsafe.
How this fits with other research
Amore et al. (2011) asked the same questions only to Down-syndrome families and got almost identical themes, so the pattern is stable.
Giesbers et al. (2020) later added staff and self-advocate voices and still found the same five buckets, showing the model extends beyond parents.
Ogg-Groenendaal et al. (2014) looked at exercise trials and saw 30% less challenging behavior after any PA program, giving a concrete payoff for fixing the barriers parents named.
Bondár et al. (2020) adds that adults with ID gain exercise confidence when helpers give individual tips, so the child-level barriers echo lifelong.
Why it matters
Use the five-bucket list as a quick parent interview during intake. Ask where family knowledge, program fit, and social fun feel strong or shaky, then pick one barrier to tackle first. Swap a staff story, add a peer buddy, or model a new game—tiny moves that flip a barrier into a facilitator and get the child moving.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: There is a need increase our understanding of what factors affect physical activity participation in children with intellectual disabilities (ID) and develop effective methods to overcome barriers and increase activity levels. AIM: This study aimed to systematically review parental perceptions of facilitators and barriers to physical activity for children with ID. METHODS: A systematic search of Embase, Medline, ERIC, Web of Science, and PsycINFO was conducted (up to and including August, 2017) to identify relevant papers. A meta-ethnography approach was used to synthesise qualitative and quantitative results through the generation of third-order themes and a theoretical model. RESULTS: Ten studies were included, which ranged from weak to strong quality. Seventy-one second-order themes and 12 quantitative results were extracted. Five third-order themes were developed: family, child factors, inclusive programmes and facilities, social motivation, and child's experiences of physical activity. It is theorised that these factors can be facilitators or barriers to physical activity, depending on the information and education of relevant others, e.g. parents and coaches. CONCLUSIONS: Parents have an important role in supporting activity in children with ID. Increasing the information and education given to relevant others could be an important method of turning barriers into facilitators.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2018 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2017.12.007