Measuring Fear of Physical Activity in Patients with Heart Failure

Jeremia M. Hoffmann, Susan Hellwig, Vincent M. Brandenburg, Heike Spaderna

Fear of physical activity (FoPA) has been suggested as a psychological barrier to exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation and everyday physical activity (PA) in patients with heart failure (HF). We evaluated the recently developed Fear of Activity in Situations-Heart Failure (FActS-HF) questionnaire that assesses affective/cognitive fear reactions to situations of varying PA intensities. The FActS-HF was given to 132 ambulatory patients with stable HF (67 ± 12 years, 80% men). In 121 participants with valid FActS-HF data, the questionnaire's dimensionality was investigated. Psychometric properties were determined in terms of reliability and validity. We assessed convergent and discriminant correlations of FoPA with anxiety, kinesiophobia, and depression. External validation criteria encompassed clinical variables and objectively assessed accelerometer measures of everyday PA in a subsample of 61 participants. The FActS-HF measures a unidimensional construct (i.e., FoPA) based on items presenting varying PA intensities (i.e., the more intense the PA, the stronger the fear response). The scale demonstrated good 2-week stability (r tt = 0.82) and excellent internal consistency reliability (α = 0.97). FoPA was moderately to strongly associated with anxiety and kinesiophobia, and weakly to moderately associated with state/trait depression, supporting convergent and discriminant validity, respectively. High FoPA was associated with feeling uninformed about HF, comorbidities, non participitation to cardio fitness groups, and less stair climbing, as measured by accelerometry. The FActS-HF is a reliable and valid instrument to measure FoPA in patients with HF and provides a promising tool for further research and practice.