Logo image
Back
Use of SOPARC to assess physical activity in parks: do race/ethnicity, contextual conditions, and settings of the target area, affect reliability?
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Use of SOPARC to assess physical activity in parks: do race/ethnicity, contextual conditions, and settings of the target area, affect reliability?

Oriol Marquet, J Hipp, Claudia Alberico, Jing-Huei Huang, Dustin Fry, Elizabeth Mazak, Gina Lovasi and Myron Floyd
BMC Public Health, v 19(1), 1730
03 Jan 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-8107-0
PMID: 31870351
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
10.1186/s12889-019-8107-0View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open
url
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-8107-0View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Ethnicity Parks & recreation areas
Background Since its introduction in 2006, SOPARC (Systematic Observation of Play and Recreation in Communities) has become a fundamental tool to quantify park visitor behaviors and characteristics. We tested SOPARC reliability when assessing race/ethnicity, physical activity, contextual conditions at the time of observation, and settings of target areas to understand its utility when trying to account for individual characteristics of users. Methods We used 4,725 SOPARC observations completed simultaneously by two independent observers to evaluate intraclass correlation and agreement rate between the two observers when trying to assess sex, age group, race/ethnicity, and level of physical activity of urban park users in different park settings. Observations were in 20 New York City parks during Spring and Summer 2017 within the PARC 3 project. Results Observers counted 25,765 park users with high interobserver reliability (ICC=.94; %Agreement.75). Reliability scores were negatively affected by the population being observed, the intensity of physical activity, and the contextual conditions and settings of the target area at the time of observation. Specific challenges emerged when assessing the combination of physical activity and race/ethnicity. Conclusions SOPARC training should aim to improve reliability when assessing concurrent measures such as physical activity, race/ethnicity, age, and sex. Similarly, observing crowded park areas with many active users areas may require more observation practice hours.

Metrics

11 Record Views
22 citations in Web of Science
24 citations in Scopus

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Logo image