Parkrun event in Newcastle, UK
Alan Harbottle/Alamy
Participating in a Parkrun event (a free activity where you are encouraged to walk or run five kilometers each week) appears to improve life satisfaction.
Parkrun is a charity that organizes events in 22 countries including the UK, US and Australia. Previous research has shown that participating improves physical and mental health.
To find out more, Steve Haak and his colleagues at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK analyzed 548 people between the ages of 18 and 83 with varying levels of exercise. The survey was conducted immediately after enrolling in Parkrun, which sponsored part of the study, and again six months later. In the survey, participants ranked their life satisfaction from 0 to 10.
This revealed that participating in Parkrun events led to an average increase in life satisfaction of approximately 0.25 points. By way of background, Haacke, a member of Parkrun’s research committee, said that at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, people in the UK were generally reporting a decline of 0.4.
On average, participants estimated that around 25% of the 0.25 point increase in life satisfaction was due to Parkrun. While this is a small improvement, “one thing we can say from a public health perspective is that small changes for many people are actually very meaningful and worth having,” the UK Claire Stevinson from Loughborough University says:
Each person participated in an average of two Parkrun events. This may have led to other life changes, such as becoming more active in general, Haake said.
“Parkrun provides a socially supportive and free environment, usually located in a nice park, which is very encouraging and allows people to develop regular exercise habits that they probably wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. ,” Stevinson says. “It has cascading benefits for health and weight, mental health and social well-being.”
topic:
(Translate tag) Exercise
