Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Perceived Exercise Benefits and Barriers

The Exercise Benefits/Barriers Scale (EBBS) was developed in response to a need for an instrument to determine perceptions of individuals concerning the benefits of and barriers to participating in exercise. The instrument may be scored and used in its entirety or as two separate scales. The instrument has a four-response, forced-choice Likert-type format with responses ranging from 4 (strongly agree) to 1 (strongly disagree). Scores on the total instrument can range from 43 to 172. The higher the score, the more positively the individual perceives exercise. When the Benefits Scale is used alone, the score range is between 29 and 116. When the Barriers Scale is used alone, scores range between 14 and 56. If used alone, the Barriers Scale does not need to be reverse-scored. In this instance, the higher the score on the Barriers Scale, the greater the perception of barriers to exercise.

Participants will be asked to give information about: age, gender, educational status, height, weight, occupation, working status, whether they have a chronic disease.

The IPAQ-S developed for participants to report activities performed for at least 10 minutes during the last 7 days. Respondents will be asked to report time spent in physical activity performed across leisure time, work, domestic activities, and transport at each of 3 intensities: walking, moderate, and vigorous. Using the instrument's scoring protocol total weekly physical activity was estimated by weighting time spent in each activity intensity with its estimated metabolic equivalent (MET) energy expenditure. The IPAQ scoring protocol assigns the following MET values to walking, moderate, and vigorous intensity activity: 3.3 METs, 4.0 METs, and 8.0 METs, respectively. Participants will be considered to have met American Collage of Sports Medicine physical activity recommendations. if they reported at least 150 min/wk of walking, moderate, or vigorous intensity physical activity.