title: Understanding Fitness Tracking Devices and their Role in Identity for University Students with a Disability: An Exploratory Study
Creators: name: Curran, Amy F
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: disability
subject: fitness tracking devices
subject: university students
subject: social identity

description: My research investigated the use of fitness tracking devices by Australian University students with disabilities. As modern lives are becoming increasingly digitised, I sought to explore and understand the experience of Australian university students with a disability. The overarching research question was how and why students with a disability use fitness tracking devices as part of their identity and to improve their health and wellbeing. I employed a cross disciplinary approach to understand the how and why students with a disability use fitness tracking devices. These devices are becoming more and more popular and modern lives are becoming increasingly digitised. The purpose of this research is to understand how these devices can contribute toward the identity of students with a disability and how the devices can improve upon health and wellbeing. The research was conducted by an insider researcher: a university student with a disability who uses fitness tracking devices and is passionate about understanding the experience of other students with a disability. Australian university students with a disability are increasing in number but there is limited research that seeks to understand their experience and the barriers to maintaining good health and wellbeing. The research builds on the sociology theory of socio-materialism and the psychology theories of social identity and disability identity informed by the research of Lupton, Malhotra and Rowe, Nario-Redmond and colleagues, Tajfel and Turner, Martin, Wearing and Haslam and colleagues. Socio-materialism theory emphasises that non-human assemblages like fitness tracking devices can have agency and impact on the lives of the users. This paper explores the powerful and complex relationship that students can have with fitness tracking devices. The research also explores how students identify with their disability and how they identify socially. The analysis examines how and why students use these devices and the impact these devices have on their identities as individuals with disability and as social members of a plethora of groups. The findings are discussed through rich narrative description that explores the story of these students' lives told to the researcher in a brief interview that captures one moment in time. The interviews sought to capture how the students conceptualised their devices as assemblages in their lives and how these devices are embodied as part of their disability and social identities. The findings raise questions about the use of the term fitness tracker in materialism and disability research. None of the students with a disability identified as a fitness tracker so the question is raised about the potentially ableist connotations of the term. Then the research asserts that the devices and social connections can contribute toward improved health and wellbeing. The conclusions also emphasise that there is a need for a lot more research in the sphere of university students with a disability who use fitness tracking devices.