Fear of movement as a barrier to physical activity in pregnant and postpartum women – A scoping review

This is a protocol for a Scoping Review that is being written exploring the 'Fear of movement as a barrier to physical activity in pregnant and postpartum women.'. The primary objective of this scoping review is to investigate the breadth and nature of existing research on fear of movement as a barrier to exercise, sport and physical activity in pregnant and postpartum populations. The proposed scoping review will follow the PRISMA-ScR protocol for scoping reviews to address gaps in the existing literature (Tricco et al., 2018). The search for this scoping review is designed to identify published studies. A preliminary search was conducted in PubMed and EMBASE to explore relevant literature on this topic. The full search strategy was developed using keywords extracted from titles and abstracts of relevant articles, along with term identified during the preliminary search. The strategy was the tailored for each database using all identified keywords and terms. Thea databases searched will include PubMed, Embase, and Scopus. Additionally, the reference lists of review articles will be screened for further relevant sources. A date limit will be applied, excluding studies published before 2015, and only studies published in English will be included. After completing all database searches, articles will be uploaded to Covidence, where duplicate entries will be removed. A pilot test of the title and abstract screening process will be conducted by two reviewers. Following this, the reviewers will independently screen the titles and abstracts, discussing and resolving any conflicts together. If consensus cannot be reached, a third reviewer will resolve disagreements. Full-text versions of the selected papers will then be retrieved and uploaded to Covidence. Two reviewers will independently assess the full-text articles based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, following the same conflict resolution process used in the title and abstract screening stage. Reasons for exclusion during full-text screening will be documented and reported in the scoping review. The final search results, along with the study selection process, will be presented in a PRISMA-ScR flow diagram (Tricco et al., 2018). An Excel spreadsheet will be used to record data extracted from articles that pass the full-text screening stage. One reviewer will independently extract data from the selected studies. To ensure all relevant information is accurately captured, a pilot trial will be conducted with two members of the review team. During this process, one reviewer will extract the data while the second reviewer verifies its relevance and accuracy. The key information recorded in the extraction table will include author(s), year of publication, country of origin, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, study aims/purpose, population and sample size, data on fear of movement, definitions of fear of movement, descriptions of physical activity (frequency, intensity, type, and duration), and information on pregnancy experiences, including feelings, sensations and opinions. The results of the data extraction process will be presented as a narrative synthesis. This scoping review will explore the occurrence of key concepts, populations, characteristics, and themes emerging from the extracted data. Findings from the selected studies will be categorised and summarised based on their relevance to the objectives of this review.© the authors