Abstract
Most research studies seeking to understand walking and cycling behaviours have used cross-sectional data to explain inter-individual differences at a particular point in time. Investigations of individual walking and cycling over time are limited, despite the fact that insights on this could be valuable for informing policies to support life-long walking and cycling. The lack of existing longitudinal data, difficulties associated with its collection and scepticism towards retrospective methods as a means to reconstruct past behavioural developments have all contributed to this deficit in knowledge. This issue is heightened when the time frame extends to longer term periods, or the life course in its entirety. This paper proposes and details a retrospective qualitative methodology that was used to study individual change and stability in walking and cycling within a life course framework. Biographical interviews supported by a life history calendar were developed and conducted with two adult birth cohorts. Interpretive, visual biographies were produced from the interview materials. Analysis focused on identifying the occurrence, context and timing of behavioural change and stability over the life course. Typologies of behavioural development were generated to resolve common and distinct behavioural patterns over the life course. Whilst the validity of reconstructed biographies of walking and cycling cannot be proven, this is an approach which offers credible and confirmable insights on how these behaviours increase, diminish, persist, cease, are restored or adapted through the life course, and how behavioural trajectories of walking and cycling may be evolving through historical time.
Highlights
Recent studies have demonstrated health benefits of physical activity that are accrued in the long term from regular activity (Middleton et al, 2010; Pluijms, et al, 2007; von Bonsdorff and Rantanen, 2011; Hirayama, et al, 2010)
This paper introduces and explains the narrative biographical approach developed to study individual’s change and continuities in walking and cycling over the life course, an approach we believe has potential for wider usage in behavioural studies
The first interview opened with discussion of the participant’s current walking and cycling activity before they were asked to tell the interviewer about their walking and cycling over their life, describing the changes and stability in their behaviour as they saw them in relation to events and transitions in their life
Summary
Recent studies have demonstrated health benefits of physical activity that are accrued in the long term from regular activity (Middleton et al, 2010; Pluijms, et al, 2007; von Bonsdorff and Rantanen, 2011; Hirayama, et al, 2010). The predominant approach to research has been to examine the relationship between an individual’s prevailing propensity to walk and cycle and the contemporaneous physical, social and individual characteristics of the setting, and from this identify opportunities for promotion of walking and cycling This conceptualises a static model of behaviour and its relationship to contextual factors. Latent class growth analysis identified distinct classes of trajectory and found that being female, older, having low income or lower educational achievement predicted a type of trajectory that was inactive or decreasing Another seam of research has come about in both fields stimulated by the proposition that life events can induce behavioural change through disruption of the context for stable behaviours. Extending the temporal view to the whole life time n Corresponding author
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