RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California 90407, USA.
Am J Prev Med. 2009 Dec;37(6):475-80. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2009.07.017.
Many assume that improving the quality and the perceived safety of facilities in parks and recreation centers is critical to attracting more users and increasing population physical activity. There are few studies in which these assumptions have been tested.
This study aims to assess the impact of park improvements on park use and physical activity.
Five intervention parks and five matched comparison parks were studied by objectively measuring park use and collecting self-reports of park use by residents before and after park improvements. After using the System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities to count park users and measure their activity levels, and conducting household interviews and intercept surveys with park users, propensity score analyses were used to adjust for differences in respondents' characteristics between pre- and post-intervention and across conditions.
Overall park use and physical activity declined in both intervention and control parks, with 39% of the decline directly attributable to fewer scheduled organized activities. Perceptions of park safety increased more in the intervention parks than in the comparison parks.
Improvements to parks may not automatically result in increased use and physical activity, especially when programming decreases. Multiple factors contribute to park use and need to be accounted for in future community-level interventions. Further, improving perceptions of safety alone is unlikely to result in increased park use.
许多人认为，提高公园和娱乐中心设施的质量和感知安全性对于吸引更多使用者和增加人口身体活动至关重要。但很少有研究对这些假设进行检验。
本研究旨在评估公园改善对公园使用和身体活动的影响。
通过客观测量公园使用情况并收集居民在公园改善前后的公园使用自我报告，对五个干预公园和五个匹配的对照公园进行了研究。在使用社区观察娱乐系统（System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities）对公园使用者进行计数并测量其活动水平，并对公园使用者进行家庭访谈和拦截调查后，使用倾向得分分析来调整干预前和干预后以及不同条件下受访者特征的差异。
干预和对照公园的总体公园使用和身体活动均下降，其中 39%的下降直接归因于组织活动减少。干预公园的公园安全感知增加幅度大于对照公园。
公园的改善不一定会自动导致使用和身体活动增加，特别是当节目减少时。多种因素会影响公园的使用，因此需要在未来的社区干预中加以考虑。此外，仅改善安全感知不太可能导致公园使用增加。
