Understanding the personal, social
and environmental impact upon
physical activity of the ‘Devon Active
Villages’ programme
Emma Solomon (PhD researcher)
CSLT PhD Researcher Seminar, June 28th 2011, Exeter, UK
Physical activity and health
The ‘Devon Active Villages’ programme
• Research partner: Active Devon
• Aim: to support rural village communities to provide sustainable
opportunities for sports and physical activity participation.
• £1 million programme (funded by Sport England & Devon County Council).
The programme will work by:
1. Identifying what opportunities each local community wants
2. Providing support to “kick start” activities
3. Supporting people within their communities to sustain the opportunities
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4
Engagement
Engagement
Engagement
Engagement
35 villages
35 villages
35 villages
35 villages
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4
12 week
12 week
12 week
12 week
activities
activities
activities
activities
35 villages
35 villages
35 villages
35 villages
Dec-12
Nov-12
Oct-12
Sep-12
Aug-12
Jul-12
Jun-12
May-12
Apr-12
Mar-12
Feb-12
Jan-12
Dec-11
Nov-11
Oct-11
Sep-11
Aug-11
Jul-11
Jun-11
May-11
Apr-11
Mar-11
Feb-11
Jan-11
‘Devon Active Villages’ timeline
Physical activity research
• In England in 2008, 32% of women and 39% of men aged 35-65 years
reported doing sufficient physical activity to meet the guidelines. (HSE, 2008)
• Community level physical activity interventions are considered a public
health priority. (Bauman & Owen, 1999)
• In addition to personal and social factors, environmental factors are
important to understanding and monitoring the factors that enable or
inhibit physical activity. (Sallis et al., 2008)
• Creating more ‘activity-friendly’ environments holds promise for
improving population-wide physical activity. (King & Sallis, 2009)
Evaluating physical activity programmes
Little is known about the effectiveness of community level interventions
designed to improve physical activity participation.
Evaluations of physical activity interventions are necessary to further the
theoretical understanding of what makes interventions successful.
Lack of rigorous evaluations of public health interventions. (Wanless, 2004)
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are considered to be the gold standard
method of evaluating interventions but are often not plausible. (Des Jarlais et al., 2004)
Cross-sectional and quasi-experimental designs are more common.
Stepped wedge randomised trial designs
An intervention is deployed in a randomised sequence until all eligible
communities have received the intervention.
This study design is beneficial when:
1.It is believed that the intervention will do more good than harm.
2.An intervention cannot be delivered concurrently to all units.
Advantages:
1. Still an experiment
2. Individuals/clusters (villages) act as their own controls.
Disadvantages:
1.Longer trial duration and large amount of data collection.
2.Greater chance of contamination in the control group.
Research Design and Methodology
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Stage 5
Baseline
(22 Villages)
Intervention
(22 Villages)
Intervention
(22 Villages)
Intervention
(22 Villages)
Intervention
(22 Villages)
Baseline
(36 Villages)
Control
(36 Villages)
Intervention
(36 Villages)
Intervention
(36 Villages)
Intervention
(36 Villages)
Baseline
(35 Villages)
Control
(35 Villages)
Control
(35 Villages)
Intervention
(35 Villages)
Intervention
(35 Villages)
Baseline
(35 Villages)
Control
(35 Villages)
Control
(35 Villages)
Control
(35 Villages)
Intervention
(35 Villages)
Data collection time points
Stage 1
Baseline
Survey
Stage 2
Survey
Stage 3
Survey
Stage 4
Survey
Stage 5
Survey
How many people do we need to survey?
• To detect an increase in physical activity from 25% to 30% at
the 5% significance level we would need to sample n subjects
from each of the 128 villages at each stage:
• For 80% power: need 10 subjects from each of the villages
(6400 subjects altogether)
• For 90% power: need 13 subjects from each of the villages
(8320 subjects altogether)
What we will measure
• General participant characteristics (age, height,
weight etc.)
• Health and physical activity behaviour
• Awareness of Active Villages and other programmes
• Physical activity attitudes and intentions
• Neighbourhood characteristics
What we hope to find
Primary outcome:
• Increased physical activity in intervention groups compared to
controls
Secondary outcomes:
• Improved attitudes towards physical activity
• High awareness and participation of the programme
• Increased sense of social support within the community
• Environment more facilitative of physical activity
Understand how the programme has impacted on the community,
and discover what types of individuals take part in the activities.
Anticipated issues
There are many factors that make this study quite complex:
• 7 districts (different local councils)
• Different local delivery partners
• Significantly different levels of deprivation
• Population/pop. density of the villages
• The effect of weather and seasons
• Reporting bias in the intervention group
• Contamination of the control group
Response rates
6400 surveys sent out in March 2011
Overall response rate = 37.7% (2412 responses)
•
•
•
•
East Devon = 40.5%
Mid Devon = 38.4%
North Devon = 34%
South Hams = 34.1%
At least 10 responses per village:
• Lowest = 11 (22%)
• Highest = 31 (62%)
• Teignbridge = 36.9%
• Torridge = 40.8%
• West Devon = 38.9%
Participant characteristics
Average age:
58 years
Gender:
63% females,
37% males
• 49.9% = normal weight (below 25 kg/m2)
• 36.3% = overweight (25 - 29.9 kg/m2)
• 13.8% = obese (over 30 kg/m2)
Education and occupation
Age at leaving full time education:
• 16 and under = 37.6%
• 17-18 years = 25.8%
• 19+ years = 36.6%
Occupational activity:
• Not employed = 49.9% (unemployed, retired,
student)
Health & long-term disabilities
Self rated health:
• 14.4% Excellent
• 33.6% Very good
• 34.0% Good
• 13.7% Fair
• 4.3% Poor
Long-term illness or disability:
• 28.7% Yes
• 71.3% No
Village Life
Time living in local area:
• Mean = 18.5 years (SD = 17.3 years)
• Range = 1 month to 91 years
Opinion on the local area:
+2 (most favorable), 0 (neutral), -2 (least favorable)
• Mean = 0.18 (SD = 0.61)
Local facilities
% using facilities in last year
-40
-60
-80
-100
Community centre
Indoor sports facility
Public tennis/squash courts
Public swimming pool
River/beach/waterfront
Sporting club/recreation centre
Local park/public green space
Walking routes/footpaths
% using facilities in last month
Use of recreational facilities in the last month / last 12 months
(within and outside of the local area)
100
80
60
40
20
0
-20
Campaign awareness
1 in 5 people had heard of a local physical activity campaign
6.7% of people reported participating in events as part of any campaign
0.3% named Devon Active Villages (8 participants) unprompted
5% of participants had heard of the Devon Active Villages programme
when asked
6.7% of these individuals reported participating in events
as part of Devon Active Villages
Some people (2%) confused Devon Active Villages with a different
theatre campaign
Physical activity levels
Males
Females 18-34 35-49 50-64 65+
Met PA recommendations 52.1%
53.2%
70.4% 63.1% 56%
39.3%
Exceeded 4 hours sitting
per day
51.5%
45.7% 43.3% 53%
67.7%
61.6%
% reporting meeting PA guidelines by education leaving age:
• 16 or under: 45.8%
• 17-18 years: 55.8%
• 19+ years: 58.7%
Intentions toward Physical Activity
• 27.0% - Unlikely to ever do more activity
• 40.7% - Intend to do more activity in the next month
• 16.7% - Intend to do more PA in the next six months
• 2.3% - Intend to do more PA, but not in the next six months
• 13.3% - Don’t know
Motivation, confidence and commitment to Physical
Activity
Activity habits, social norms, and village supportiveness
Physical activity habit: Mean: 0.58, SD: 1.03
PA Social norms: Mean: 0.17, SD: 0.79
Village supportiveness of PA: Mean: 0.03, SD: 0.87
(+ 2: most favorable response, 0: neutral, -2: least favorable response)
Thank you – any questions?
• Research presented here was conducted during an ESRC Studentship
under its Capacity Building Clusters Award (RES-187-24-0002) in
partnership with Active Devon.
• For more information about this project and the work of the Centre for
Sport, Leisure and Tourism research, see www.ex.ac.uk/slt.
• Emma Solomon, es244@ex.ac.uk, 07899986841.
References
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Bauman, A. and Owen, N. (1999). Physical activity of adult Australians: epidemiological evidence and potential
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Habicht, J.P., Victora, C.G. et al. (1999). Evaluation designs for adequacy, plausibility and probability of public
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Sallis, J.F., Owen, N., Fisher, E.B. (2008). Ecological models of health behavior. See Ref. 39, pp. 464–85
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