Is it easy to define physical activity? Analysis of the answers of freshmen in sports sciences and physiotherapy

When considering promotion of an active lifestyle, people representations play a key role. They can be envisaged through the DIRAP acronym (Definition, Impact, Representations, Assessment, Planning). According to that, analyzing definition of physical activity is central as it provides important information on the knowledge about that fundamental concept and valuable data to understand how to increase the number of citizens who respect the guidelines. We collected the definitions of 1,409 students from the University of Liege who started studies in sports sciences or physiotherapy between 2013-2014 and 2023-2024 academic years.
After treatment, 87% of the whole sample proposed a real definition. Adding to them the answers coded as ‘Information’, 1324 records were gathered for analysis. Students gave a mean of 1 out of the 4 itemps identified in the OMS (2010) definition. Only 1.2% provided the expected four items. The most proposed referred to the body movement (48.8% of the students). When identifying the kind of physical activities, sport was mentioned by 89.3% of the 1.315 students who answered to the question. Only 0.7% of them identified the five expected dimensions.
Findings show that there is a lack of knowledge about physical activity in the young adults who just finished their secondary school and begin studies in which that concept is central. Examples of what could be implemented to fight against such situation will be developed.