A systematic framework to classify physical activity research for individuals with spina bifida

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Study used the Behavioral Epidemiological Framework (BEF) to systematically classify physical activity (PA) studies for people with spina bifida (SB) to examine the current state of research in this area. The BEF classifies research into one of five phases: phase 1 research links behaviors to health, phase 2 includes research focused on developing methods for measuring behavior, phase 3 research identifies factors that influence behavior, phase 4 research evaluates interventions to change the behavior, and phase 5 studies translates research into practice. An audit of the literature was conducted using search engines and keywords related to PA and SB. Inter-rater reliability was established between the research team coding articles based on established inclusion criteria. Finally, literature was categorized into one of the five phases. Seventy-seven articles met the inclusion criteria and were categorized. Forty-three percent of the articles were categorized in phase 1, 21 percent in phase 2, 32 percent in phase 3, 4 percent in phase 4, and zero in phase 5. Results indicated that the majority of articles are in phase 1, indicating that PA and SB research is still in early stages of development. Future research needs to move beyond phase 1 to examine factors that affect PA behaviors and ways to increase PA behaviors in the SB population.

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