Received: 15 May 2023
Revised: 19 September 2023
Accepted: 15 October 2023
DOI: 10.1111/1745-5871.12629
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
A reliability study of the Park Life public participatory geographic information system survey Paula Hooper
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Nicole Edwards
The Australian Urban Design Research Centre, School of Design, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia Correspondence Paula Hooper, The Australian Urban Design Research Centre, School of Design, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Email: paula.hooper@uwa.edu.au Funding information The study was funded by a Western Australian Near-Miss Awards (WANMA) 2021 (Future Health Research and Innovation Fund) and an Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) High Impact Project (2021).
Abstract Planning policy for parks is typically guided by a standard approach that fails to account for how communities actually use parks. Moreover, few researchers know the exact parks people use, even though “use” is often hypothesised in the relationships being tested. Public participatory geographic information systems (PPGISs) present an opportunity to collect specific, spatially referenced information on park use and park-based activities. However, the reliability of these instruments has not been studied. The Park Life PPGIS captured residential location, park location, and park-based behavioural data from a sample of adults and was tested for reliability. Kappa scores and intra-class correlations assessed the reliability of the items. Recall of individual items all showed acceptable reliability and mostly achieved “substantial” agreement or “near-perfect” agreement. The Park Life PPGIS is a reliable instrument to capture park use and activities. Such information is essential for public health and physical activity researchers, urban planners, and park managers to develop informed planning and public health policies and programs that promote park use. KEYWORDS parks, physical activity, public health, public open space, public participatory GIS, urban geography and planning
1 | INTRODUCTION Public open green space is essential for healthy, liveable, and sustainable urban environments and a priority under the United Nations (2016) Sustainable Development Goals. Urban green spaces fulfil numerous biophysical, social, and cultural purposes (Grose, 2009) to manage urban water, protect biodiversity, and reduce urban heat island effects. Urban green spaces also provide settings or facilities for physical activity; promote mental well-being and support attention restoration, stress reduction, and positive emotions; and foster social well-being through social interaction and participation (Bowler et al., 2010; Dinnie et al., 2013; Koohsari et al., 2015).
In geographical, public health, and physical activity research, “parks” have typically formed the basis for exploring urban green space and health outcomes (Hooper et al., 2020). Researchers have often taken a “recreational opportunity spectrum” approach (Clark & Stankey, 1980) focused on physical and spatial aspects of park provision and measures of the availability and accessibility to parks (Bancroft et al., 2015; Lamb et al., 2019) or of the “quality” of parks (Bedimo-Rung et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2018). These methodological approaches typically use buffers around participants’ homes or compute distances to the closest park from homes and assess associations between parks and health outcomes (Lamb et al., 2019). However, such an approach assumes that
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Geographical Research. 2024;62:134–146.