Table 2.

Qualitative studies.

Study	Primary Research Question	Secondary Research Question	Methods	Sample	Study Place and Time	Data Analysis	Main Results
[34]	Care of arthrosis patients in general practice, views of patients, general practitioners, and practice nurses	Non-drug therapy options for arthrosis patients	Semi-structured interviews with open questions (approx. 45 min.) in the practices	20 general practitioners and 20 practice nurses	Place not reported 2004	Recorded digitally, transcribed literally and analyzed by four different researchers with ATLAS.ti software categorized by four researchers independently	Almost all physicians report regularly mentioning muscle strengthening. Physicians tend to provide general advice. Self-assessed success rate in motivating patients was considered low.
[35]	General practitioners’ and patients’ practices and attitudes regarding overweight encountered during preventive counseling	PA in preventive counseling of overweight patients in general practice	Audiotaped preventive counseling	70 general practitioners were invited, n = 12 accepted the invitation, invited n = 52 dialogues recorded	Berlin March–September 2007	Recorded digitally, transcribed literally and analyzed by three different researchers with ATLAS.ti softwareQualitative content analysis according to Mayring	PA is the second most common topic in the counseling.
[36]	General practitioners’ and patients’ practices and attitudes regarding overweight encountered during preventive counseling	PA in preventive counseling of overweight patients in general practice	Audiotaped preventive counseling	70 general practitioners were invited, n = 12 accepted invitation, invited n = 50 dialogues recorded	Berlin Time not reported	Recorded digitally, analysis according to the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS), major themes: cardiovascular risk factors, diet, PA	PA seldom mentioned.
[37]	Obesity management of in general practice from patients’ views	PA as part of the obesity management in general practice	Semi-structured interviews	Overweight and obese patients (n = 15; 11 female) out of 52 potential patients	Berlin and Brandenburg	Recorded digitally, transcribed literally using the transcription software “f4” version 3.0.3. Qualitative content analysis according to Mayring Some of the interviews analyzed by two researchers independently	In individual cases a medical history of preferred exercise forms; concrete suggestions for physical activities; Frequent recommendations on the regularity and intensity of PA, with concrete advice on frequency or advice on integrating exercise into everyday life.
[38]	General practitioners’ understanding of prevention, especially as part of the counseling of obese and overweight patients	PA as part of the obesity management in general practice	Semi-structured interviews approx. 54 min in the practices	General practitioners (n = 15; 9 female), out of n = 78 invited	Berlin and Brandenburg 2006–2007	Recorded digitally, transcribed literally using the transcription software “f4” version 3.0.3. Data analysis ATLAS.ti (Version 5.0) Qualitative content analysis according to Mayring One of the interviews analyzed by two researchers independently	Compared to nutrition, the topic of physical activity receives much less attention. Two physicians recommend patients to participate in cardio sport groups. If at all, physicians typically give general recommendations, recommendations for PA in everyday life, mentioning courses of the health insurance companies or own offers. In one counseling PA is not mentioned at all.
[39]	Exercise on Prescription within the campaign “Berlin on the move” (“Berlin komm(t) auf die Beine”)	Use and relevance of Exercise on Prescription, Benefits and barriers	Semi-structured expert interviews (discussion and pretest) 15–59 min, in th e practices	General practitioners (n = 7), who know the campaign “Berlin on the move”, n = 244 invited	Berlin September–October 2013	Recorded digitally, transcribed literally using the transcription software “f4” version data analysis according to Meuser and Nagel	None of the physicians use the exercise on prescription in the intended sense; physicians attribute high to very high significance of routine PA counseling in both healthy and diseased patients, the perceived effectiveness of the counseling is either very high or very low.