What can post qualitative inquiry offer physical activity intervention? An example of intergenerational physical activity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Post qualitive inquiry offers a potentially innovative research space for sport and exercise psychology scholars by providing alternative ontological premises for researching physical activity behaviour. This article is a worked example of post qualitative inquiry into an instance of physical activity intervention, a digital smartphone app designed to encourage intergenerational physical activity. The (un)methodology rethinks physical activity intervention by following what intervention does and what it makes. Using diffractive analysis, the stories of 10 parents with children aged 3–8 years were read-through poststructuralist and posthumanist theory to produce three material-discursive stories or worldings. The worldings demonstrate three insights for doing physical activity intervention differently by showing that intervention configures its problems, people and resources; its outcomes are dialogical improvisations; and intervention does not finish when it ends. Sport and exercise psychologists are encouraged to think with these insights to open new ways of doing and evaluating physical activity intervention.