Physical activity and sport qualitative paper IJT FINAL.pdf (367.75 kB)
Barriers and facilitators of physical activity and sport participation among young transgender adults who are medically transitioning
journal contribution
posted on 2017-05-04, 13:38 authored by Beth Jones, Jon Arcelus, Walter P. Bouman, Emma HaycraftEmma HaycraftBackground: Transgender people (those who feel incongruence between the gender they were assigned at birth and their gender identity) engage in lower levels of physical activity compared to cisgender (non-transgender) people. Several factors have been shown to affect physical activity engagement in the cisgender population; however, the physical activity experiences of young transgender adults have not been explored. It is therefore the aim of the current study to
understand what factors are associated with physical activity and sport engagement in young transgender adults who are medically transitioning.
Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 young transgender adults (18–36 years) who had initiated their medical transition at a transgender health service in the United Kingdom. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis.
Results: Two main themes were identified: (1) barriers and (2) facilitators to physical activity and sport. Overall, the young transgender adults were insufficiently active due to inadequate changing facilities, body dissatisfaction, fears surrounding “passing” and not being accepted by others. At the same time, participants were motivated to engage in physical activity to increase their body satisfaction and gender congruence. However, participants felt there was a lack of safe and comfortable spaces to engage in physical activity and sport.
Conclusion: Young transgender adults who are medically transitioning experience several barriers to physical activity and sport, despite being motivated to be physically active. Initiatives to facilitate young transgender adults’ ability to put their motivations into practice (i.e. to be more physically active) are needed.
Funding
Bethany Jones was supported by a PhD studentship that was cofunded by Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and Loughborough University.
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
International Journal of TransgenderismVolume
18Issue
2Pages
227 - 238Citation
JONES, B.A. ... et al, 2017. Barriers and facilitators of physical activity and sport participation among young transgender adults who are medically transitioning. International Journal of Transgenderism, 18 (2), pp. 227-238.Publisher
© Taylor & FrancisVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2017-01-18Publication date
2017-04-20Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Transgenderism on 20 Apr 2017, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2017.1293581ISSN
1553-2739eISSN
1434-4599Publisher version
Language
- en