Active Living Research

The objective of this community-based participatory research project was to develop a clinically useful, psychometricallysound scale to measure community integration for adults with severe mental illness. Two researchers and an administrator of a behavioral health agency (BHA) recruited a group of providers, half with lived-experience of severe mental illness. Through a series of five focus groups, provider participants guided identification of four major domains of community integration and the development of 95 scale items; items and domains were reviewed by three external researchers with subject matter expertise. Initial pilot: BHA providers administered the scale to clients (n = 51) with 19 completing it twice to investigate internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and restricted variance and collinearity of items. Further piloting: providers at two BHAs administered the scale to clients (n = 178) to conduct exploratory factor analysis and analyze internal consistency. After initial pilot, 50 items remained post item reduction for restricted variance and collinearity, with Cronbach's alpha of .95 and test-retest reliability of .90. After a larger pilot, a four-factor solution emerged, aligning conceptually with the four domains as anticipated; 33 items loaded (factor loadings ≥ .4), with RMSEA of .069 and overall Cronbach's alpha of .89 (subdomains ranging .78-.86). The scale has good preliminary psychometric properties and appears to be feasible for use in BHAs for the purposes of research and evaluation, with clinical utility for assessment and treatment planning.

Even though physical activity and sedentary behaviour are two distinct behaviours, their interdependent relationship needs to be studied in the same environment. This study examines the influence of urban design, neighbourhood built and social environment, and household and individual factors on the interdependent relationship between objectively measured physical activity and sedentary behaviour in children in the Canadian city of Saskatoon. Saskatoon's built environment was assessed by two validated observation tools. Neighbourhood socioeconomic variables were derived from 2006 Statistics Canada Census and 2010 G5 Census projections. A questionnaire was administered to 10-14 year old children to collect individual and household data, followed by accelerometry to collect physical activity and sedentary behaviour data. Multilevel logistic regression models were developed to understand the interrelationship between physical activity and sedentary behaviour in the context of diverse environmental exposures. A complex set of factors including denser built environment, positive peer relationships and consistent parental support influenced the interrelationship between

Implementation section of research report prepared for Pottstown (PA) Health & Wellness Foundation. Includes methodologies for mapping and framing transportation networks, considering human behavior as influencing park choice and use, and a reconsideration of park types in semi-urban and rural areas.

Installing cycling infrastructure well-separated from motorized traffic is hypothesized to increase children's transportation cycling. However, in some streets it may not be possible to install such cycling paths (e.g. due to financial or space constraints). The current paper investigates which physical factors could increase parents' perceptions of environmental supportiveness for children's transportation cycling, across six different types of cycling infrastructure. Parents completed a choice-based conjoint task by indicating which photographed street they preferred to let their child cycle along. The streets were experimentally manipulated on 7 physical factors (e.g. traffic speed, vegetation). Interactions between type of cycle path and the other environmental factors were identified. When no or limited separation from motorized traffic is present, street characteristics increasing parents' safety perceptions (traffic density and speed) should be prioritized when aiming to improve the supportiveness of streets for children's transportation cycling. Comfort and aesthetics can further improve streets' environmental supportiveness when cycling paths are more separated from traffic.

The new technologies and specially the possibilities offered by the internet, multiply the capabilities to write and to tell stories, to create them collectively, to redesign them, to cite them, to amplify them, to link them, to comment them, et cetera. Having available a multitude of resources not only for being storytellers but for accessing to diverse information and contents, changes the possibilities and conditions in which storytelling is generated in comparison with before internet and prompts us to focus on the importance of storymaking abilities in the classroom. In a context where storytelling can be performed without spatial or temporal constraints and where algorithms like Narrative Science’s natural language generation programme1 can write original stories by drawing down content from big data sources, the act of writing and of sharing ideas by using words is still essential to participate in the construction of our societies. Written communication is especially importa...

Little is known on transportation patterns of the Brazilian population. We evaluated the prevalence of active transportation and its correlates in a representative sample of the Brazilian adult population. A countrywide household-based cross sectional study was carried out including separate samples of adults and elderly individuals from 23 states in Brazil selected through a multistage approach. Physical activity as a means of transport was assessed using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire. A cutoff point of 150 minutes per week was used. 12,116 adult and 6,506 elderly individuals were interviewed in 100 Brazilian cities. The proportion of individuals insufficiently active in the transport was 66.6% (95% CI 65.7-67.4) among the adults and 73.9% (95% CI 72.8-75.0) among elderly individuals. Active transportation was more frequent among men than women, and was inversely related to age and schooling. Among older adults only, older age was related to physical inactivity in transportation. High rates of insufficiently active individuals in the transport were found in Brazil suggesting the need of action on transport systems.

Research from multiple domains has provided insights into how neighborhood design can be improved to have a more favorable effect on physical activity, a concept known as walkability. The relevant research findings/hypotheses have been integrated into a Walkability Framework, which organizes the design elements into nine walkability categories. The purpose of this study was to test whether this conceptual framework can be used as a model to measure the interactions between the built environment and physical activity. We explored correlations between the walkability categories and physical activity reported through a survey of residents of Tucson, Arizona (n =486). The results include significant correlations between the walkability categories and physical activity as well as between the walkability categories and the two motivations for walking (recreation and transportation). To our knowledge, this is the first study that reports links between walkability and walking for recreation. Additionally, the use of the Walkability Framework allowed us to identify the walkability categories most strongly correlated with the two motivations for walking. The results of this study support the use of the Walkability Framework as a model to measure the built environment in relation to its ability to promote physical activity.

Research from multiple domains has provided insights into how neighborhood design can be improved to have a more favorable effect on physical activity, a concept known as walkability. The relevant research findings/hypotheses have been integrated into a Walkability Framework, which organizes the design elements into nine walkability categories. The purpose of this study was to test whether this conceptual framework can be used as a model to measure the interactions between the built environment and physical activity. We explored correlations between the walkability categories and physical activity reported through a survey of residents of Tucson, Arizona (n =486). The results include significant correlations between the walkability categories and physical activity as well as between the walkability categories and the two motivations for walking (recreation and transportation). To our knowledge, this is the first study that reports links between walkability and walking for recreation. Additionally, the use of the Walkability Framework allowed us to identify the walkability categories most strongly correlated with the two motivations for walking. The results of this study support the use of the Walkability Framework as a model to measure the built environment in relation to its ability to promote physical activity.

Background: The physical attributes of residential neighborhoods, particularly the connectedness of streets and the proximity of destinations, can influence walking behaviors. To provide the evidence for public health advocacy on activity-friendly environments, large-scale studies in different countries are needed. Associations of neighborhood physical environments with adults' walking for transport and walking for recreation must be better understood. Walking for transport and walking for recreation were assessed with a validated survey among 2650 adults recruited from neighborhoods in an Australian city between July 2003 and June 2004, with neighborhoods selected to have either high or low walkability, based on objective measures of connectedness and proximity derived from geographic information systems (GIS) databases. The study design was stratified by area-level socioeconomic status, while analyses controlled for participant age, gender, individual-level socioeconomic status, and reasons for neighborhood self-selection. A strong independent positive association was found between weekly frequency of walking for transport and the objectively derived neighborhood walkability index. Preference for walkable neighborhoods moderated the relationship of walkability with weekly minutes, but not the frequency of walking for transport-walkability was related to higher frequency of transport walking, irrespective of neighborhood self-selection. There were no significant associations between environmental factors and walking for recreation. Conclusions: Associations of neighborhood walkability attributes with walking for transport were confirmed in Australia. They accounted for a modest but statistically significant proportion of the total variation of the relevant walking behavior. The physical environment attributes that make up the walkability index are potentially important candidate factors for future environmental and policy initiatives designed to increase physical activity.

Despite evidence suggesting that neighbourhood characteristics are associated with physical activity, very few mixed methods studies investigate how relocating neighbourhood, and subsequent changes in the built environment, influences physical activity. This sequential mixed methods study estimates associations between changes in overall physical activity and transportation walking and cycling and changes in objectively assessed neighbourhood walkability (quantitative phase) and describes perceived barriers and facilitators to physical activity following residential relocation (qualitative phase). During the quantitative phase, self-reported changes in transportation walking, transportation cycling, and overall physical activity following residential relocation were measured using a 5-point scale: (1) a lot less now, (2) a little less now, (3) about the same, (4) a little more now, and (5) a lot more now. Walkability improvers reported a slight increase in transportation walking (me...

Associations between,access to destinations and,walking,for transport were examined. Households,(N ¼ 2650) were selected from,32 urban,communities,varying in walkability and socio-economic,status. Respondents,reported,perceived proximity of destinations, transport-related walking, reasons for neighbourhood selection, and socio-demographic characteristics. Geographic,Information Systems data defined objective measures,of access to destinations. Measures,of access to destinations,were,associated,with transport-related walking. Associations depended,on,socio-demographic factors and type of destinations. Workplace proximity was the most

Associations between access to destinations and walking for transport were examined. Households (N ¼ 2650) were selected from 32 urban communities varying in walkability and socio-economic status. Respondents reported perceived proximity of destinations, transport-related walking, reasons for neighbourhood selection, and socio-demographic characteristics. Geographic Information Systems data defined objective measures of access to destinations. Measures of access to destinations were associated with transport-related walking. Associations depended on socio-demographic factors and type of destinations. Workplace proximity was the most significant contributor to transport-related walking, especially among women. Regular walking to work resulted in the accrual of sufficient physical activity for health benefits. r

Associations between access to destinations and walking for transport were examined. Households (N ¼ 2650) were selected from 32 urban communities varying in walkability and socio-economic status. Respondents reported perceived proximity of destinations, transport-related walking, reasons for neighbourhood selection, and socio-demographic characteristics. Geographic Information Systems data defined objective measures of access to destinations. Measures of access to destinations were associated with transport-related walking. Associations depended on socio-demographic factors and type of destinations. Workplace proximity was the most significant contributor to transport-related walking, especially among women. Regular walking to work resulted in the accrual of sufficient physical activity for health benefits. r

Background: The physical attributes of residential neighborhoods, particularly the connectedness of streets and the proximity of destinations, can influence walking behaviors. To provide the evidence for public health advocacy on activity-friendly environments, large-scale studies in different countries are needed. Associations of neighborhood physical environments with adults' walking for transport and walking for recreation must be better understood.

This study examines prevailing characteristics of public attitudes to local government in Turkey based on the findings of a questionnaire based research project. The level of public knowledge of local government, people's satisfaction with local service provision, public views and complaints about local services are analysed. The findings show that the level of public knowledge of local government is low and people do not complain about local government services although the level of satisfaction is low. The belief that complaints would have no effect is the main reason for not complaining. The impact of sex, age, education, income, length of residence in the locality, housing tenure, and political opinion on public attitudes to local government is also assessed. Of these variables, age, education and income levels are found to be significant. Local government is an integral component of administrative systems of all modern societies, which seek to achieve effective and efficient provision of public services and to ensure realisation of democratic values at local level. It is well known that the traditional so-called 'liberal perspective', which emphasises the value of local government in achieving proper democracy in society and efficiency and effectiveness in public service provision, evolved essentially during the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries and provides major reference for local government writings today (Guler, 1998: 1-2, 12). According to J.S. Mill, a prominent advocate of local government, local political institutions are essential elements in the system of democratic government as they widen the opportunity to participate and provide the capacity to educate the citizen in the practice of politics (Mill, 1911). Substantial scope for local government is of practical sense because local interests, knowledge and capacity to oversee make the prospect of achieving efficient and effective service provision much more likely. Fabian Socialists

Comprehensive plans provide an overall vision for a city’s land use
and development and influence community health conditions. As
part of a community-engaged research project, a Healthy Living
and Active Design Scorecard was applied to the comprehensive
plan of League City, Texas, to identify health-promoting design
and planning strategies. Although the plan scored similarly to
published examples, several areas of improvement aligned with
priorities from a community health assessment were identified,
including improving public transportation and access to exercise
and recreation. Future revisions of the plans and neighbourhood
scaled designs targeting these issues could improve the health of
the community.

In the early 2000s, the local governments in Turkey has started to enlarge their functions and to adopt social policies, and Turkey's bid for European Union membership has been an important driving force for this change. The field research covers first the policies of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality for the disadvantaged groups in general and second the questionnaire survey held with the disabled people as one of those groups among elderly, poor, disabled, women and children. Accordingly, it is argued that the growing interest in the urban social policy does not mean contribution to the wellbeing of the deprived groups but also their accession to those services should be taken into account.

Background: As a part of a multi-level obesity-prevention approach, the SNAP-Ed encourages walking and biking (w/b) so that youth can achieve the recommended sixty minutes of daily physical activity. To assess the walkability, bikeability, and safety of the SNAP-Ed schools, the University of Arizona Nutrition Network (UANN) implemented the Active School Neighborhood Checklist (ASNC) in 10 elementary schools in Pima County.
Methods: The ASNC contains 57 questions divided into eight sections related to supportive policies, built environment, and infrastructure. Total scores of 0-41 were considered poor, scores 42-83 were moderate, and scores 84-113 were good.
The UANN visually surveyed a one-mile radius of each school for built-environment factors. Other questions were answered by, consulting with school officials, city and county planners, public health representatives, and Safe Routes to School (SRTS) coordinators.
Results: Schools’ total scores ranged from poor to moderate (17-47). Nine of the schools surveyed scored poorly (<31); one school scored moderately (47). All schools surveyed had many physical barriers (high-speed traffic, multiple lanes, etc.). All schools scored highly (14-16 out of a possible 20 points) in the supportive policies section.
The ASNC assessment identified to the UANN that two schools had sufficient infrastructure, built environment assets and supportive programs to encourage w/b to school via the creation and dissemination of w/b plans. The SRTS program was contracted by the UANN to create the w/b plans.
Conclusions: The ASNC tool provided an overview of the w/b assets and challenges of the SNAP-Ed schools. The results identified appropriate schools for w/b plans.

The new technologies and specially the possibilities offered by the internet, multiply the capabilities to write and to tell stories, to create them collectively, to redesign them, to cite them, to amplify them, to link them, to comment them, et cetera. Having available a multitude of resources not only for being storytellers but for accessing to diverse information and contents, changes the possibilities and conditions in which storytelling is generated in comparison with before internet and prompts us to focus on the importance of storymaking abilities in the classroom. In a context where storytelling can be performed without spatial or temporal constraints and where algorithms like Narrative Science's natural language generation programme 1 can write original stories by drawing down content from big data sources, the act of writing and of sharing ideas by using words is still essential to participate in the construction of our societies. Written communication is especially important in academic contexts because it is through texts that contents are created. Aimed to improve the abilities and skills of pupils to generate contents, we designed and applied an experience which consisted of using storymaking as a context for learning, by giving students of the last year of the Advertising and Public Relations Degree at the University of Vigo a role in the building of the contents delivered in the course " Advertising and Cultural Industries ". Students co-created a collective book named Cultural/Creative Industries in an Environment in which the Physical and the Virtual Merge. 2 During the four months of the course, we applied an action research framework 3 similar to the one we developed to identify and to assess the consequences of using privative software in the classroom (Gómez-Diago, 2004), which consisted on collecting impressions in the classroom through direct observation and

The aim of this study is to examine the association between sense of community, walking, and neighborhood design characteristics. The current study is based on a sub-sample of participants (n ¼ 609) from the US Atlanta SMARTRAQ study who completed a telephone survey capturing physical activity patterns, neighborhood perceptions, and social interactions. Objective measures of neighborhood form were also computed. Univariate and multivariate models (General Linear Models (GLM)) were used to examine the association between sense of community (SofC) and aspects of the built environment, physical activity, and neighborhood perceptions. In multivariate models the impact on SofC was examined with progressive adjustment for demographics characteristics followed by walking behavior, neighborhood design features, neighborhood perceptions and time spent traveling in a car. After adjustment, SofC was positively associated with leisurely walking (days/week), home ownership, seeing neighbors when walking and the presence of interesting sites. SofC was also associated with higher commercial floor space to land area ratios (FAR) – a proxy for walkable site design that captures the degree to which retail destinations are set back from the street, the amount of surface parking, and urban design of an area. Conversely the presence of more mixed use and perceptions of steep hills were inversely associated with SofC. SofC is enhanced by living in areas that encourage leisurely walking, hence it is associated with living in neighbourhoods with lower levels of land use mix, but higher levels of commercial FAR. Our results suggest that in terms of SofC, the presence of commercial destinations may inhibit social interaction among local residents unless urban design is used to create convivial pedestrian-friendly commercial areas, e.g., providing street frontage, rather than flat surface parking. This finding has policy implications and warrants further investigation.

Leisure may potentially play a key role in rehabilitation counseling, including psychiatric rehabilitation. Based on recovery
and positive psychology frameworks in which meaning-making is a central concept, this study examined the role of leisuregenerated
meanings (LGMs) experienced by culturally diverse individuals with mental illness in potentially helping them
better cope with stress, adjust to and recover from mental illness, as well as feel more actively engaged in life. One-onone
survey interviews were conducted with African (n = 35), Hispanic/Latino (n = 28), Caucasian (n = 28), and Asian
(n = 8) American adults (aged between 23 and 78) (total n = 101) with mental illness (e.g., bipolar disorder, n = 32; major
depression, n = 23; schizophrenia, n = 22) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Using general linear modeling, we found that LGMs
significantly predicted the adjustment to and recovery from mental illness, leisure stress-coping, leisure satisfaction, and
perceived active living positively, and lower leisure boredom. The findings have implications for psychiatric rehabilitation
to better support persons with mental illness from a strengths-based, meaning-centered, and active-living promotion
perspective in which leisure seems to play an important role.

Background: Existing measures of perceptions of the environment associated with walking commonly rely on providing a definition of 'neighbourhood' , e.g. 1 mile area around the home. We have little understanding of how these examples relate with adults' own geographical definitions of their neighbourhood area. Our pilot study examined the congruence between definitions used in environmental questionnaires and adults' own definitions of neighbourhood.

Background Few studies have considered the joint effects of social and physical environments on physical activity (PA). The primary purpose of this study was to examine the compounding effects of neighbourhood walkability and social connectedness on PA.