BIOLOGY OF EXERCISE VOLUME 6.2, 2010

Validity and reliability evidence of the attitudes towards physical activity of greek prisoners

D.O.I: http:doi.org/10.4127/jbe.2010.0039

PANTELIS KONSTANTINAKOS1, MANOLIS SKORDILIS2, ALEXANDRA TRIPOLITSIOTI1, ANTREAS PAPADOPOULOS1 1 2

Department of Sport Management, University of Peloponnese Department of Physical Education and Sport, University of Athens

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument to assess the attitudes of Greek prisoners regarding physical activity and sports. A total of 308 male adult Greek prison inmates participated voluntarily, from three Greek prisons. Exploratory factor analysis revealed 3 factors consisting of 11 physical activity and sport items that explained 51.75% of the total variability. These factors were named: a) «need for physical activity» (7 items), b) «physical activity before and during imprisonment» (2 items), and c) «non - participation in physical activity» (2 items). The internal consistency for the whole scale was .70, while reliability indexes ranged from .88 to .58 for the three factors. Results showed that Greek prisoners identified the neediness for physical activities and sport during imprisonment and rated high the respective items. Overall findings showed that the new questionnaire, named Attitudes Towards Physical Activity of Greek Prisoners (ATPA - GP) may be perceived as a reliable and valid instrument to identify the attitudes of Greek prison inmates towards physical activity and sports. Further research is required to confirm the present findings, with a wider sample, using confirmatory factor analysis, examining the differences across gender, age, marital status, type of prison, sentence, etc..

Key Words: sports.

inmates, recreation, attitude, physical activities,

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INTRODUCTION It is well documented that physical activities (PA) and sports are beneficial for the human body, promoting a healthy life style and overall quality of life (29, 15, 26). Despite that fact, physical activities and sports were prohibited for prison inmates, since their sentences were perceived mainly as a mean for punishment than for recreation (27, 23). Recent studies however, recognized the importance of physical activities and sports in prisons for the rehabilitation of inmates (4, 25, 2, 16). The encouraging research findings indicated that, through PA, the prisoners develop new interests which could evolve into a career, develop awareness of personal needs and appropriate avenues to satisfy them. Further, they foster new interests, develop acceptable outlets of stress, increase access to new social environments, negotiate constrains, identify activities that serve as alternatives to addictions, enhance self-esteem through realizing success with a giving pursuit, develop decision making and problem solving skills and foster interpersonal skills such as trust, cooperation and team work. The physical activity and sports programs for inmates were initiated in 1973, when the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals recommended that every prison should employ a physical education teacher with specialization in recreation or a graduated professional with a degree in recreation management (8, 19). Since then many prisons incorporated physical activities and sports as part of the education system of offenders according to their rights (17, 3). These rules were established by the prisonal system in North America, while the council of Europe (1989) developed guidelines for providing physical education and sport opportunities for prisoners (5). The rapid growth in prison populations in western countries during the last decades, has offered the opportunity to researchers to examine the involvement in physical activities (PA) and sport of prison inmates (35, 18, 20, 12, 13). Hagan (11) pointed out that physical activity, recreation and sport might have a positive effect in the rehabilitation of prison inmates. Stumbo and Little (30) suggested that leisure activities are important for the rehabilitation of prisoners. Similarly Frey and Delanay (10) confirmed that the leisure participation in prison life decreased significantly the tension release and increased the possibility of friendships and social relationships. Williams et al (34) concluded that not all physical activities or sports are proper for all inmates and some of them should be individualized according to the risk of each activity. Finally, Garcia et al (9) found in a qualitative study that the effect of physical activity and sports upon prisoners may be summarized under five factors: (a) escaping time; (b) perceived therapeutic benefits; (c) social control; (d) gendered dimensions; and (e) performing masculinity.

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The attitudes theory of Moscovici (21, 22) guided the present study. According to Moscovici, attitudes represent a system of social values, ideas and practices orienting individuals in their material and social world. To that extend, social representations are reflected elements of social construction, which, in turn, are constantly converted into social reality and being subjected for re-interpretations and re-evaluations (22). Concerning physical activity, Dishman, Sallis and Orenstein (6) stated that attitudes, personality characteristics in general and demographic factors have a direct effect upon exercise habits of all individuals. Returning now to the present study, the decision of prisoners to engage themselves in physical activity depends, to a wide extend, upon their respective attitudes and the way they are constructed within the limits of their social life in prison (6). Our literature review provided no studies examining the attitudes of prisoners regarding physical activity and sports. Further, no study has reported validity and reliability evidence of instruments specifically designed to examine attitudes of Greek prisoners. In turn, more than 20.00 inmates are presently imprisoned in Greece and the examination of their respective attitudes for participation in physical activity and sports is of significant merit Therefore, the present study was designed to identify the attitudes of Greek prisoners regarding physical activity and sports.

MATERIALS AND METHODS The present investigation was carried out in the Department of Sport Management, Faculty of Human Movement and Quality of Life, in the University of Peloponnese in Greece. The study was initiated on January 2008 and finished on December 2009. In order to conduct the study, the researchers took the permission from the Ministry of Justice. After permission was obtained, three Greek prisons, with a total of approximately 3000 inmates, were randomly selected (Koridallos of Attica, Tripolis of Arcadia and Tirinthas of Argos). Accordingly, the researchers mailed a research package to the Directors of each prison, including a cover letter and the questionnaire. In the cover letter the researchers described the specific purpose and details of the study. The Directors informed all prisoners about the research project and requested them to voluntary participate in the study. The inmates who decided to participate completed the questionnaires and returned them to the Directors. A total of three hundred and eight questionnaires were completed (N = 308) and finally collected from the Directors who, in turn, mailed them back to the researchers.

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Instrument development The instrument used in the present study was developed with procedures similar to those reported by Tripolitsioti et al, (32, 33). Specifically, the following steps were employed: a) a review of related literature, b) informal interviews with physical education teachers with specialization in recreation, c) development of a pilot questionnaire from a panel of specialists, and d) field testing of the instrument. Specifically, following a critical review of the literature on measures of physical activities and sports, a pool of 12 items was developed. Accordingly, five informal interviews with physical education teachers were conducted. The aim of these interviews was to generate attitude items specifically related to inmates. Four items were added, based on these interviews. These items were related to teaching activities or sports, in Greek prisons. The above total pool of 16 items was subjected to a critical analysis by three specialists, representing prominent academics in physical education, psychology and research methods in Greece. They were asked to comment on the relevance of the items to the concept of the inmate’s attitudes and the clarity of the statements. This procedure reduced the number of items to 11. The final instrument was reviewed by a Greek literature teacher in order to ensure comprehension and appropriate language (14). Finally, a pilot study was conducted before distributing the questionnaires to the prisoners. The aim of the pilot study was to test the face validity (comprehension) of the instrument. The final version of the questionnaire incorporated 11 items, were prisoners presented the extend of their agreement or disagreement in a five-point Likert scale, with responses ranging from (a) 1: strongly agree, (b) 2: agree, (c) 3: undecided, (d) 4: disagree, and (e) 5: strongly disagree. Statistics The data collected from 308 prisoners were entered into Microsoft Excel 2007 software and later converted to the SPSS 17.0 statistical package for analysis. Descriptive statistics with means, standard deviations, frequency rankings of the attitudes statements and respective percentages were examined initially. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted afterwards to determine the number of extracted factors (14, 31, 24, 36). Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were used to confirm the internal consistency for each factor extracted.

RESULTS A total of 308 remnants participated in the present study. The demographic characteristics, including age, education, prison type, region and participation in sports and physical activities are presented in table 1.

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Table 1. Frequency and percentage of the responders by age, education, prison type, region and participation in sports and physical activities

Variables

N

%

20 - 30

130

42.48

31 - 40

130

42.48

73

23.86

Elementary school

68

22.22

Junior High School

152

49.67

Senior High School

66

21.57

University

20

6.54

Age (Years)

⬎ 41 Education

Prison type Open

148

48.37

Closed

158

58.63

194

63.40

Region Urban Suburban

59

19.28

Village

53

17.32

36

11.77

Participation in sports and PA Athlete Spectator

46

15.68

Fans

103

33.66

Nothing

119

38.89

An exploratory factor analysis upon the 11 - item scale was performed in order to investigate the underlying dimensions of the prisoner’s attitudes regarding physical activities and sports. Only factors with eigen values above 1.0 were retained. The results revealed three factors and the respective eigen values and percentage of variance explained are presented in table 2. The 3 factors explained 51.09% of total variability. The Cronbach alpha for the whole scale was .70, which is satisfactory, while values for the three factors ranged from .82 to .55. Factor loadings ranged from .54 to .80 for factor 1, .75 to .56 for factor 2 and .64 to .61 for factor 3. The responses of the 308 prisoners upon the three extracted factors may be found in table 3.

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Table 2. Exploratory factor analysis

Factors

N of items Eigen values % of variance Cumulative (%)

Need for physical activity Physical activity before and during imprisonment Non-participation in physical activity

7

4.089

31.870

31.870

2

1.843

10.859

42.729

2

1.734

9.022

51.751

Table 3. Responses of Greek Prisoners in the Three Extracted Factors

Variable

M

SD

N

Factor 1 1 Factor 2 2 Factor 3 3

2.11 2.89 2.80

0.89 1.07 1.12

306 306 306

Total Score

2.38

0.76

306

1: Factor 1: Need for PA, 2: Factor 2: PA before and during imprisonment, 3: Factor 3: Non-participation in PA.

DISCUSSION The present investigation was contacted to identify the attitudes of Greek prisoners regarding physical activities and sports. The three extracted factors, according to the content of their respective items, were named «need for physical activity», «physical activity before and during imprisonment» and c) «non - participation in physical activity». The instrument developed in the present investigation was named ‘Attitudes Towards Physical Activity of Greek Prisoners’ (ATPA - GP) and may be a useful tool for sport directors and physical education teachers with specialization in recreation, in their effort to evaluate the attitudes upon physical activities and sports of prison inmates. Examination of the mean scores in table 3 revealed that Greek prisoners had overall moderate to positive attitudes towards physical activities and sports (M = 2.38, SD = 0.76). The positive attitudes were evident for the dom-

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inant factor 1, named ‘Need for PA’. The above finding is in agreement with Hagan (11) who reported the importance of sport and physical activity for prisoners. Similarly, Garcia et al (9) examined the multiple, complex and contradictory meaning of physical activity in a high security Spanish prison. The researchers reported that several dimensions constituted the overall meaning of daily physical activity in the life of Spanish prisoners. Such dimensions incorporated factors as escaping time, therapeutic benefits, social control, gendered dimension and performing masculinity (9). Concerning factors 2 (PA before and during imprisonment) and 3 (non-participation in PA), our data revealed moderate attitudes of Greek prisoners. This finding is in agreement with previous studies (10, 7, 34). Frey and Delanay (10) specifically found that leisure participation in physical activity decreased tension and increased friendship and social life of prisoners in Nevada. Elger (7) reported that sports participation decreases stress and is beneficial for the health of prisoners. Finally, Williams et al (34) reported that, although necessary, physical activity should be individualized according to the risk and health status for each prisoner. The results of the present study are subjected to certain limitations and may not be generalized without caution. First, no validation studies, concerning attitudes of prison inmates, were found to relate the present findings. Second, the theory of Moscovici (21, 22) provided the theoretical frame for the development of the ATPA - GP, since attitudes are considered an important element for predicting human behavior. Attitudes, however, are presented as an important factor for explaining behavior in other theories as well, such as the Theory of Planned Behavior of Ajzen and Fishbein (1). In any case, if another theory was used for the purposes of the present study, the results may not have been the same. Third, no confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to strengthen the validity of the present findings. Fourth, the respondents may be perceived as a committed group of prison inmates who were willing to actively participate in the study. The overall population of the three recruited prisons was more than 5000 inmates but only responses from 308 inmates were gathered. Therefore, it appears that the majority of prisoners did not express their attitudes towards PA and sports. More research is required in the future to extend the present findings. Validation studies are of importance to establish the quality of instrument examining attitudes of Greek prisoners, in an attempt to predict their engagement in PA and sports within prisons. A wide and representative sample of prisoners may be carefully selected in the future, to generalize the present findings. The representative sample may incorporate male and female prisoners, with a variety of sentences, in opened and closed type prisons, etc. Finally, intervention programs may examine the effect of PA and sports upon prisoner’s physical and mental health, personality, depression, quality of life, etc.

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CONCLUSION The purpose of the present investigation was to construct an instrument in order to measure the attitudes of Greek prison inmates regarding physical activities and sports. Further testing of the scale with larger samples is necessary in order to discuss with more confidence validity and reliability related aspects. This would give the chance to make demographic comparisons and investigate the relationship of age, gender, marital status etc with attitudes in an attempt to predict involvement in PA and sports of Greek prisoners (28, 3, 25).

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Address for correspondence: Konstantinakos Pantelis Orthias Artemidos & Plataion 23100, Sparta Greece e-mail: [email protected]