Physical activity, nutrition, and psychological well-being among youth with visual impairments and their siblings

Abstract

Purpose

The primary purpose of this study was to examine physical activity, nutritional intake, and psychological well-being differences between youth with visual impairments and their siblings residing in the same household. A secondary purpose was to examine the relationship between physical activity behavior and psychological well-being among youth with visual impairments.

Materials and Methods

A sample of 22 dyads of youth with visual impairments and siblings completed this study. Data were collected through parent-reported demographic and psychological well-being questionnaires, nutritional intake questionnaires, and accelerometry. Data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially, examining proportion difference using McNemar’s z-test, and mean differences using multivariate analyses of variance.

Results

Siblings without visual impairments had higher but not significantly higher daily average moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (d = 0.46), significantly higher prosocial score (d = 0.63), and lower but not significantly lower difficulty scores (d = 0.39), than youth with visual impairments. Small, not statistically significant, nutritional intake differences between siblings were found.

Conclusions

Differences in physical activity and nutritional habits between those with visual impairments and their siblings were not significant, supporting the environmentally driven nature of these variables. Associations between physical activity and well-being were not apparent in this study but may be partially explained by low participant physical activity.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Youth with visual impairments and the siblings may be influenced by the same familial factors and molded in a similar fashion by parenting behaviors regarding health-related behaviors.

• In this study, youth with visual impairments engaged in similar physical activity and nutritional behaviors to their siblings without visual impairments.

• Efforts to improve health-related behaviors among those with visual impairments may be most effective at the family level.

• Small subsets of youth with visual impairments gain mental health benefits from physical activity engagement.

Keywords:

• Vision disorder
• accelerometry
• exercise
• happiness
• quality of life

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Early Career Investigator Grant from SHAPE America.