Physical activity is described as positive and important for all people. Maintaining a physical activity when moving to residential homes can be problematic when people often have high age, significant impairments and diseases, which affects the physical ability.

The residential home should have a home-like atmosphere and provide opportunities for physical activity both indoors and outdoors. The apartments are often small so that it can be difficult to be physically active in them. So most of the physical activity must be done in public areas.

The aim is to investigate how people are interested in, and able to, physical activities even though they often have significant disabilities, and how older people in residential homes are experiencing opportunities for physical activity and how the opportunities are affected by the property's physical environment.

The result will be based on participant observations, to be done in four residential homes in two municipalities in Sweden. The observations will be carried out during 2013 and is part of a thesis project. The method is chosen to be able to understand people's lives from an "inside perspective", for a time spent in the elderly homes and to some extent also participating in the activities that occur.

The result will be an account of the observations with a focus on physical activity in their environment and is expected to show factors in the areas of physical environments, the individual's own will, personnel matter and is expected to show how people living in residential homes to be physically active, how they can be physically active based on the physical environment they live in and the staff's ability to support the physical play.