Effect of walking exercises on quality of life

Abstract

Objective: to examine the effects of regular walking exercises on quality of life. Method: 168 people who did regular walking exercises and who had no health problems participated in the study. A questionnaire that was prepared to collect demographic data and the Quality of Life Questionnaire (SF-36) were used for data on quality of life. The results were given in mean +/- standard deviation. The data were tested for normality before deciding on the statistical analyzes to be made on the data collected from the participants. The skewness and kurtosis values of the data were examined in this normality test. As a result of the statistical analyses, it was determined that the data were within the range of -1.5> ... <+1.5. The Independent Groups t-test and One- Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used in the analysis of the normally distributed data. The significance level was taken as p<0.05. Results: there were no detected statistically significant between: 1) the sub-dimensions of quality of life and the gender of the participants (p>0.05); 2) the sub-dimensions of quality of life and the age groups of the participants (p>0.05); and 3) the sub-dimensions of quality of life and the duration of regular walking exercise (p>0.05). Conclusion: when the results of the studies reported in the literature and the results obtained in this study were evaluated, very different results were detected. The basis of this is considered to be the differences in the sampling groups of these studies and the different exercise backgrounds.