Perceived barriers to sport participation for Singapore national wheelchair athletes

Purpose: 1) To investigate the perceived barriers identified by Singapore wheelchair athletes to their continued sport participation. 2) To propose recommendations to overcome the perceived barriers to sports participation for people with disabilities using the disabled athletes’ feedback and increase the sport participation rate for the general disabled community. Method: Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 national wheelchair athletes from 5 sports. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcriptions were checked for accuracy before coding. Transcriptions were coded using thematic analysis and grouped into 2 (personal and environmental) themes. Results: 13 total perceived barriers to sports participation were identified. The barriers were categorized into 8 environmental factors and 5 personal factors. Conclusion: Environmental factors were identified as barriers more frequently by the national wheelchair athletes interviewed relative to personal factors. The most commonly perceived barrier was negative public perception while other frequently mentioned barriers included time constraints, inaccessible facilities and transport-related issues. The most common suggestion made by the disabled athletes to increase the sport participation rate among the general disabled community was to reach out to the disabled community more proactively to create a greater awareness of disability sports. Keywords: perceived barriers, sport participation, wheelchair athletesBachelor of Science (Sport Science and Management