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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Exercise Physiology
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1514827
This article is part of the Research Topic Injuries, Injury Prevention and Training in Climbing - Volume II View all 7 articles

FACTORS AFFECTING HEALTH-SEEKING BEHAVIOR IN SPORTS CLIMBERS IN METRO MANILA: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Provisionally accepted
Danyelle Jay Ty Cruz Danyelle Jay Ty Cruz *Jan-Tyrone Cabrera Jan-Tyrone Cabrera
  • Ospital ng Makati, Makati, Philippines

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: In the Philippines, studies on athletes are hard to come by when compared to those done internationally, even more so on newer Olympic sports such as Sports climbing. Furthermore, there is a lack of internationally published research on professional health-seeking behavior for the physical conditions of Filipino athletes. Thus, the objective of the study was to investigate the characteristics of sports climbers in Metro Manila that were associated with better health-seeking behavior Materials and Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study design was done using an online interview-assisted questionnaire. The Action-intention subscale of the Attitudes Towards Medical Help-seeking Scale was used to measure health-seeking behavior in the study population. Other data gathered includes the population characteristics, injury characteristics, and social-environmental characteristics of sports climbers in Metro Manila.Results: A total of 125 participants were interviewed, majority of whom were young adults and middle aged (72.8%), college graduates (67.2%), working full time (54.4%), middle class (22.4%), with slightly more males (49.6%). None of the social-environmental factors were found to be significant (p>0.05). Trust in websites was found to be the only significant personal factor (2.99 ± 1.00, p<0.05). Among the injury factors studied, the location of pain at the hip/pelvis and knee was found to be significant (p<0.05). Discussion: Climbers in Metro Manila have a decreased tendency to engage in health-seeking behavior. Because of this, sports climbers in Metro Manila may be a vulnerable group in terms of availability of health care systems specific to the sport, accessibility of knowledge for self-diagnosis and management, and data enough present in the Philippines to create guidelines and protocols for climbing injuries. Better monitoring of information on websites is needed. Healthcare providers should also improve the way they approach and deal with sport climbing injuries.

    Keywords: Sport climbing1, Factors Affecting Health-Seeking Behavior2, Action-Intention subscale3, Bouldering4, Climbing Injuries5

    Received: 21 Oct 2024; Accepted: 29 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Cruz and Cabrera. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Danyelle Jay Ty Cruz, Ospital ng Makati, Makati, Philippines

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.