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Exploring the health-promoting potential of the 'parkrun' phenomenon: What factors are associated with higher levels of participation?

Purpose: "parkrun" is a free and increasingly popular weekly 5-km walk/run international community event, representing a novel setting for physical activity (PA) promotion. However, little is known about who participates or why. This study aimed to identify sociodemographic, health, behavioral, individual, social, and environmental factors associated with higher levels of participation.

Design: Cross-sectional.

Setting: Tasmania, Australia; June 2016.

Participants: Three hundred seventy two adult parkrun participants.

Measures: Online survey measuring sociodemographic, health, individual, social and environmental factors, parkrun participation, and PA.

Analysis: Descriptive statistics, zero-truncated Poisson regression models.

Results: Respondents (n = 371) were more commonly women (58%), aged 35 to 53 years (54%), and occasional or nonwalkers/runners (53%) at registration. A total of 44% had overweight/obesity. Half had non-adult children, most spoke English at home, and 7% reported PA-limiting illness/injury/disability. Average run/walk time was 30.2 ± 7.4 minutes. Compared to regular walkers/runners at registration, nonwalkers/runners were less commonly partnered, more commonly had overweight/obesity, less physically active, and had poorer self-rated health. Multivariate analyses revealed relative parkrun participation was inversely associated with education level and positively associated with interstate parkrun participation, perceived social benefits, self-efficacy for parkrun, and intentions to participate.

Conclusion: parkrun attracts nonwalkers/runners and population groups hard to engage in physical activity. Individual- and social-level factors were associated with higher relative parkrun participation. parkrun's scalability, accessibility, and wide appeal confers a research imperative to investigate its potential for public health gain.

History

Publication title

American Journal of Health Promotion

Volume

33

Pagination

13-23

ISSN

0890-1171

Department/School

Menzies Institute for Medical Research

Publisher

Amer J Health Promotion Inc

Place of publication

1660 Cass Lake Rd, Ste 104, Keego Harbor, USA, Mi, 48320

Rights statement

Copyright The Author(s) 2018

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Behaviour and health

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