Australian Osteopathy Practice Survey on Exercise Prescription

733 Australian osteopaths (74% of a 992-person sample) reported often using exercise prescription in patient care. This secondary analysis of a cross-sectional survey from the Osteopathy Research and Innovation Network profiles the characteristics of these practitioners. The work was authored by Michael Fleischmann of the Victoria School of Management.

Use Cases

• Modeling the likelihood of exercise prescription use based on practitioner demographics and practice characteristics.
• Analyzing referral network patterns between osteopaths and exercise physiologists.
• Investigating correlations between exercise prescription and the discussion of physical activity or nutrition.
• Profiling treatment modalities associated with frequent exercise prescribers, such as soft tissue or trigger point techniques.

Strengths

• Based on a nationally representative sample of 992 registered Australian osteopaths.
• Provides specific odds ratios (ORa) for associations between practitioner characteristics and exercise prescription use.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count for the underlying data is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect temporal or geographic bias inherent to the original survey source.

Provenance

Source

Osteopathy Research and Innovation Network (ORIN), an Australian practice-based research network.

Collection Method

Secondary analysis of a cross-sectional survey.

Geography

Australia