Health & Place 83 (2023) 103085
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The park physical activity questionnaire (Park-PAQ): A reliable measurement tool for park-based and total physical activity Nicole Edwards *, Paula Hooper The Australian Urban Design Research Centre, School of Design, The University of Western Australia. Australia. Level 2, 1002 Hay Street, Perth, WA 6000, Australia
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Keywords: Moderate and vigorous physical activity Reliability Parks Park-based physical activity Physical activity measurement Park features
Background: Few studies have explicitly quantified the proportion of park-based physical activity to park users’ overall physical activity levels. Population studies need new context-specific physical activity measurement tools to achieve this. The objective of this study was to develop a reliable measure of self-reported park use and physical activity undertaken within and outside of parks to determine the contribution that park-based physical activity makes to overall physical activity levels. Methods: A test-retest reliability study (n = 104) was conducted using the Park Physical Activity Questionnaire (Park-PAQ), an instrument based on the Active Australia Survey. Park-PAQ items captured the frequency and duration of walking for recreation or exercise, walking for transport, moderate and vigorous physical activity and strength, conditioning and balance activities done in parks and elsewhere. Results: Recall of doing any walking for recreation (kappa = 0.649, p < 0.001) and any vigorous physical activity (kappa = 0.772, p < 0.001) was ‘substantial’, recall of doing any moderate physical activity (kappa = 0.553, p < 0.001) was ‘moderate/acceptable’, and recall of any walking for transport (kappa = 0.840, p < 0.001) ‘near perfect’. Recall of the time spent walking for recreation in parks (ICC = 0.928, p < 0.001) was ‘near perfect’, whilst recall of time spent doing moderate activity in parks (ICC = 0.925, p < 0.001) and vigorous activity in parks (ICC = 0.962, p < 0.001) was ‘near perfect’. Time spent walking for transport in a park (ICC = 0.200, p = 0.056) showed ‘poor’ agreement. Repeatability of the usual level of park use was ‘substantial’ (kappa = 0.744). Conclusions: The Park-PAQ reliably measures six domains of physical activity and quantifies the proportion of physical activity done in parks as a proportion of total physical activity. The Park-PAQ, used alone or embedded into park or physical activity surveys, will reliably capture context-specific activities that will optimise popu lation level physical activity interventions, park programming and park management and design.
1. Background Parks are an integral part of healthy towns and cities. Freely acces sible parks facilitate physical activity and social connections that, in turn, foster abundant physical and psychological health benefits at population levels (Twohig-Bennett and Jones, 2018; Wolf and Wohlfart, 2014). Additionally, at a time where cities face a wide range of chal lenges, sustainable development efforts place parks and public spaces at the forefront of revitalisations and transformations. In fact, transforming public spaces to promote physical activity is considered pivotal to ach ieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (World Health Organization, 2018). However, the role that parks play in promoting physical activity depends on how they are used and, in particular, whether they are used for moderate and vigorous physical activity
(Cohen and Leuschner, 2019). The physical environment strongly determines population physical activity levels and many studies have reported the provision of, and access to, parks to be associated with increased physical activity (Sallis et al., 2016; Kärmeniemi et al., 2018; Tcymbal et al., 2020; Bedimo-R ung et al., 2005) (Cohen et al., 2014) (Schipperijn et al., 2017) (Hooper et al., 2020). Additionally, several studies have found adults who used parks were more likely to achieve recommended physical activity levels than those who did not (Hooper et al., 2020; Akpinar and Cankurt, 2017; Deshpande et al., 2005; Giles-Corti et al., 2005; Villeneuve et al., 2018; Yuen et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2018; Hughey et al., 2021) and greater physical activity time in parks is often associated with better well-being (Hansmann et al., 2007; Richardson et al., 2013). Yet, despite a multi tude of studies finding positive associations between park use and
* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: nicole.edwards@uwa.edu.au (N. Edwards), paula.hooper@uwa.edu.au (P. Hooper). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2023.103085 Received 7 December 2022; Received in revised form 31 March 2023; Accepted 11 July 2023 Available online 29 July 2023 1353-8292/© 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd.