Physical activity patterns in urban neighbourhood parks: insights from a multiple case study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Many characteristics of urban parks and neighbourhoods have been linked to patterns of physical activity, yet untangling these relationships to promote increased levels of physical activity presents methodological challenges. Based on qualitative and quantitative data, this article describes patterns of activity within urban parks and the socio-demographic characteristics of park visitors. It also accounts for these patterns in relation to the attributes of parks and their surrounding neighbourhoods. METHODS: A multiple case study was undertaken that incorporated quantitative and qualitative data derived from first-hand observation in a purposive sample of four urban parks. Quantitative data, based on direct observation of visitors' patterns of use and socio-demographic characteristics, were collected using a structured instrument. Differences in frequencies of observed activities and socio-demographic characteristics of visitors were compared between the four parks. Qualitative data, based on direct observation of park characteristics and patterns of use, were generated through digital photography and analyzed through captioning. Quantitative data on patterns in activity and socio-demographic characteristics were synthesized with the qualitative data on park and usage characteristics. RESULTS: A comprehensive portrait of each park in the study was generated. Activity types (sedentary, walking, dog-related, cycling, and play), patterns of park use (time of day, day of week), and socio-demographic characteristics (age group, social group) differed between the four parks. Patterns in park use and activity appeared to be associated with socio-demographic characteristics of the surrounding neighbourhoods as well as the physical and social environmental characteristics specific to each park. CONCLUSIONS: Both park and neighbourhood characteristics influence patterns of use and physical activity within parks. The study findings suggest that socio-demographic characteristics of neighbourhoods surrounding parks need be considered in planning, development and management. Engaging local communities could help planners to develop and update urban parks in ways that reflect the needs and characteristics of community residents and, in turn, encourage visits and more physical activity amongst visitors.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".