Physical activity and exercise experiences among people with Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Physical activity and exercise are recommended as part of treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) or Parkinson’s disease (PD). Rates of physical activity are low in these groups, and the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions affected almost every aspect of life. The purpose of this thesis was to understand and interpret the perceptions and experiences of physical activity and exercise during and following the COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding restrictions, among individuals with mild-to-moderate MS or PD in Canada, to understand the impact on overall well-being. The study was guided by interpretative phenomenological analysis and reflexive thematic analysis. Eleven participants (4 males, 7 females; 4 people with MS and 7 with PD) each completed two interviews online focusing on physical activity and exercise behaviours (interview 1) and perceived outcomes of physical activity and exercise changes related to symptoms, physical health and functioning, psychological and emotional health, social functioning, and overall well-being (interview 2), over the span of the pandemic. Two themes were generated: 1) “It truly was a COVID-19 bubble:” The influence of isolation and restrictions in Canada; and 2) Managing MS or PD during COVID-19: “Exercising was essential.” For most participants, physical activity declined due to COVID-19 restrictions, which in turn was associated with an increase in symptoms and a decrease in physical activity and exercise. Three participants described little change to their frequency of physical activity, although often the mode and intensity changed. Two participants described how COVID-19 restrictions lifted barriers, leading to more frequent engagement in physical activity and exercise during lockdowns specifically. Participants also described how COVID-19 and its restrictions contributed to the progression of their diseases and the impact on daily routines and psychological motivation. Findings highlight the need to provide accessible, motivating, and sociable exercise for individuals with MS or PD, in situations where in-person exercise is not feasible. In particular, developing technology to allow for exercise closer to in-person experiences, aiming to increase stamina, full-body movement, and balance.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".