HLTH 4300 Week 4 Barrier Inventory Example

Four Barriers Tested Against Janelle's Own Records: Sorting "No Time," "Too Tired," "Too Expensive" and "Not Safe After Dark" by Level, With Two That Held Up and Two That Did Not

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 4300: Personal Health and Wellness

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Four Barriers Tested Against Janelle's Own Records: Sorting "No Time," "Too Tired," "Too Expensive" and "Not Safe After Dark" by Level, With Two That Held Up and Two That Did Not

The Four Barriers

At the start of the term, the dispatcher at the center of this course named four reasons she did not walk more: no time, too tired, too expensive and not safe after dark. A barrier inventory treats each as a claim to be tested, not a fact to be accepted or an excuse to be dismissed. This paper tests each against her own records, her fourteen-evening log and her shift calendar, then sorts the barriers that survive by level using the social ecological model.

The Model Used for Sorting

In the social ecological model, influences on behavior are arranged in layers: intrapersonal factors such as knowledge, attitudes and energy; interpersonal relationships with family and friends; institutional or organizational factors such as workplace rules; community factors such as the neighborhood; and public policy (McLeroy et al., 1988). Sorting barriers by level matters because each level calls for a different kind of response. A barrier rooted in an employer's schedule cannot be solved by individual resolve.

Testing Each Barrier

"No Time"

The record partly supports this barrier and partly refutes it. On workdays, Janelle's ten-hour shift ends at five, her commute adds 70 minutes and she arrives home at about 5:40 p.m. Her son returns at about 6:30. That leaves roughly 50 minutes. Her log shows that on five of the eight workday evenings she did not walk, she spent 20 minutes or more sitting in her parked car. On those evenings, the time existed but went elsewhere. On one evening, overtime until 5:45 left no time at all. On days off, she had time but walked only when the walk had another purpose.

Verdict: refuted as a general barrier, supported for overtime days. Janelle has a narrow but real window on most workdays.

"Too Tired"

Janelle rated her tiredness each evening on a scale from 1 to 5 as part of her log. On the two workdays she walked, she rated her tiredness 4 and 4, the same as on most evenings she did not walk. Tiredness did not distinguish walking evenings from non-walking ones; what distinguished them was whether the car routine was interrupted. She also wrote that on both walking evenings she felt "more awake afterward."

Verdict: did not hold up. Tiredness is real, but in her record it did not prevent walking.

"Too Expensive"

Janelle priced a gym membership at $45 a month and a fitness class at $15 a session. But the activity she has actually done, walking, costs nothing beyond shoes, which she owns. Her log shows no evening on which cost was the reason she did not walk.

Verdict: did not hold up for walking. It applies to the gym, which is not her plan.

"Not Safe After Dark"

Janelle's street has no sidewalk for a quarter mile and two streetlights, one broken. The nearest lit path, a 1.2-mile loop around a city park, is a 4-minute drive or 12-minute walk away. Her log covered late September, when sunset was near 7:20 p.m., so darkness did not affect any logged evening. But her shift calendar shows that from early November, sunset will fall before she arrives home, and her neighborhood route will be dark.

Verdict: held up. The barrier did not appear in the September log only because the season had not yet arrived; the calendar shows it will.

A Barrier She Did Not Name

The log revealed a barrier Janelle did not list: overtime. Her employer requires dispatchers to cover until the next shift's dispatcher logs in, and on one evening in two weeks this kept her until 5:45. Her shift calendar shows overtime on about one workday in five over the past three months.

Sorting by Level

Table 1

Barriers Sorted by Level of the Social Ecological Model

Two barriers held up, and both sit at levels outside Janelle's direct control.

What the Inventory Shows

The two barriers that held up are not about Janelle's motivation or energy. One is organizational: her employer's overtime rule. The other is community-level: the lack of lighting and sidewalks on her street. The two that did not hold up are intrapersonal and were contradicted by her own records. This pattern is common in the ecological view: people often name personal barriers because those are the ones they feel, while the barriers that actually constrain them may sit in their workplace or neighborhood (McLeroy et al., 1988).

The intrapersonal barrier that did matter was one she did not name: the parked-car routine, a cue-driven habit of the kind Wood and Neal (2007) describe, which filled her window on most workdays. For planning, with the national weekly minimum for moderate activity as the eventual target (Piercy et al., 2018), the inventory suggests two adjustments. Overtime days need a fallback rather than a promise to walk anyway. Darkness requires a different route, the lit park loop, from November onward, which adds a short drive or a longer walk to reach it.

Conclusion

Tested against Janelle's log and calendar, "too tired" and "too expensive" did not hold up, and "no time" held up only on overtime days. "Not safe after dark" held up, and the calendar shows it will matter from November. The surviving barriers sit at the organizational and community levels, which means her plan must work around them rather than rely on willpower to overcome them.

References

McLeroy, K. R., Bibeau, D., Steckler, A., & Glanz, K. (1988). An ecological perspective on health promotion programs. Health Education Quarterly, 15(4), 351-377. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019818801500401

Piercy, K. L., Troiano, R. P., Ballard, R. M., Carlson, S. A., Fulton, J. E., Galuska, D. A., George, S. M., & Olson, R. D. (2018). The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. JAMA, 320(19), 2020-2028. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.14854

Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychological Review, 114(4), 843-863. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843