Excuses, excuses, excuses: What are the barriers to participating in an antenatal physical activity intervention?

Background: Recruitment into obesity and inactivity trials during pregnancy helps researchers to understandand improve health behaviour. Knowledge of reasons for non-participation could enhance recruitment intosuch interventions and is the main focus of this paper.Methods: Data were generated from an antenatal physical activity (PA) RCT. During antenatal bookingappointments, women who met the inclusion criteria were invited to a recruitment evening. Numbers invited,those expressing an interest in taking part and those attending were recorded. Reasons for non-interest orattendance were noted and analysed using content analysis.Findings: Over 36 weeks, 659 primigravidae women attended booking appointments, 418 were deemedeligible for the RCT, 257 (62 per cent) registered interest, and 109 (26 per cent) attended. Reasons for notregistering interest included: no interest; unable to attend; no time. Those who registered interest but did notattend gave reasons for non-participation as work commitments, sickness and time constraints.Discussion: Problems associated with recruitment and participation into clinical trials involving PA areoften not reported. The main barriers in this study were a lack of interest, time and sickness. Althoughsickness is unavoidable, time commitments, a common barrier to PA for sedentary individuals, needs to beaddressed when recruiting to PA trials.