![]() ![]() Participants conceptualised PA as a tool, which was imposed on the system. This may prevent their use in ways that enhance PA policies and programmes. While emphasizing the prevalence of these ideas across the PA sector, there is uncertainty as to their meaning and implications. This research highlighted the importance of extending complexity theory and systems-thinking. Nevertheless, participants suggested potentially effective ways to stimulate system change, which require passionate and enterprising leadership, and included varied evidence use, a focus on localised implementation and different ways to connect people. ![]() Collaborative practices may contribute to a previously unobserved sense of detachment from the systems’ complexity. Participants also perceived an increasingly diverse but ill-defined PA policy system that spans the domains of expertise and responsibility. Its meaning was context-dependent and dynamic, which generated uncertainty about applying the concept. Participants discussed complexity in contrasting ways. Three overarching themes were constructed to reflect policy-makers’ uncertainty about complexity and the application of such perspectives to this policy space, their sense that PA was an unexceptionable yet unclaimed policy issue, and their desire for influence and change. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted, and managed with NVivo 10 software. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with national-level policy-makers from United Kingdom government settings (five civil servants, three politicians, two policy advisors). In this study, we critique key elements of complexity theory and consider how it is understood and put into practice in PA policy-making. This is of particular interest given the challenges of multisectoral interest and poorly defined stakeholder boundaries that are associated with PA promotion. We explore why, by focusing on how these concepts are understood and applied by PA policy-makers. The impact of this perspective shift, across many sectors, may be underwhelming. Complexity theory and systems-thinking are increasingly popular in physical activity (PA) research and policy discourse. ![]()
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