ABSTRACT
Barriers, facilitators, and motivators to exercise for cancer survivors living in urban settings are well described in the literature. However, there is a lack of comparable information for cancer survivors living in rural communities. We describe the exercise behaviours, barriers, facilitators, and motivators to exercise participation of cancer survivors living in a rural Canadian community. Adult cancer survivors with a primary address in a rural region of Ontario, Canada, who had visited a community hospital in the previous five years were mailed a cross-sectional survey assessing current exercise volume (minutes of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic and resistance exercise), as well as exercise preferences, barriers, and facilitators. Seventy-two survivors (mean age 65 years) completed the survey (16% response rate). A majority of respondents were diagnosed with breast cancer (49%) in the last 5 years (61%). Aerobic- and resistance-training guidelines for cancer survivors were met by 38% and 10% of respondents, respectively. Physical side effects were the most common barrier to exercise during treatment (65%) and post-treatment (35%). Being unaware of available exercise programs, time for exercise, distance to exercise services, and cost were commonly reported barriers during and post-treatment (reported by 10-22%). Respondents reported needing information from a qualified exercise professional (46%), access to a gym (33%) and exercise equipment (26%), and social support (25%) to facilitate exercise participation. Consistent with urban-based cancer survivors, most rural survivors surveyed in this study were not meeting the physical-activity guidelines and reported numerous exercise barriers. These findings can serve as a resource for this and similar rural communities when developing community-based exercise-support services for cancer survivors.
Subject(s)
Cancer Survivors , Neoplasms , Adult , Aged , Cross-Sectional Studies , Exercise , Humans , Neoplasms/therapy , Ontario , Rural PopulationABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To determine parent-child agreement for the Quality of My Life (QoML) questionnaire. To establish construct validity of the QoML questionnaire. To determine the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) for the Quality of Life (QOL) and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) scales. METHODS: A total of 136 families of children with inflammatory arthritis were interviewed. The QoML questionnaire was completed for the child's current state of health, and under 2 hypothetical scenarios, where (1) there is a hypothetical small improvement, and (2) there is a hypothetical small deterioration in health. The differences between the original QOL and HRQOL scores and hypothetical improvement and deterioration scores, respectively, were calculated to give MCID scores. RESULTS: In total, 131 families completed the questionnaires. Intraclass correlation coefficients for parent proxy report and patient self-report of the QOL and HRQOL were 0.63 and 0.40, respectively. Correlations of QOL with pain and disease severity were moderately negative (r = -0.55 and -0.56, respectively, p < 0.0001). Correlations of HRQOL with pain and disease severity were strongly negative (r = -0.66 and r = -0.68, respectively, p < 0.0001). The MCID for improvement on the QOL was 7 mm, and for the HRQOL 11 mm. The MCID for deterioration in QOL was -33 mm, and for HRQOL -38 mm. CONCLUSION: The QoML questionnaire demonstrated fair parent-child agreement and good convergent construct validity. MCID scores will enable clinicians to interpret QoML questionnaire results in a clinically meaningful way.
