London Sport and Southwark Council - physical activity survey - please help

[LondonSport-MW]

Are you female and living in Southwark? Do you find it hard to lead an active life? Then we want to hear from you. By completing the short survey (which will only take 10 minutes) at the bottom of the page you can opt to be entered into a prize draw to win an Apple iPad mini 2.

Why are we doing this survey?

In Southwark, there is a big difference between men?s and women?s levels of physical activity (like walking, running and going to the gym). Only 22% of women are active, compared to 46% of men in the borough. Southwark Council and London Sport are working together to tackle these differences, because they believe that leading a more active life, means a happier and healthier community.

This survey is a start towards understanding how to address these issues. That?s why your opinion really matters to us. We need to hear from women like you in Southwark, to better understand what?s going on, so that organisations in the borough can improve their services to you, your female friends and family.

Thank you,

London Sport Insight Team

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/YBZWYX2

[LondonSport-MW]

Are you female and living in Southwark? Do you find it hard to lead an active life? Then we want to hear from you. By completing the short survey (which will only take 10 minutes) at the bottom of the page you can opt to be entered into a prize draw to win an Apple iPad mini 2.

Why are we doing this survey?

In Southwark, there is a big difference between men?s and women?s levels of physical activity (like walking, running and going to the gym). Only 22% of women are active, compared to 46% of men in the borough. Southwark Council and London Sport are working together to tackle these differences, because they believe that leading a more active life, means a happier and healthier community.

This survey is a start towards understanding how to address these issues. That?s why your opinion really matters to us. We need to hear from women like you in Southwark, to better understand what?s going on, so that organisations in the borough can improve their services to you, your female friends and family.

Thank you,

London Sport Insight Team

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/YBZWYX2

[Elphinstone's Army]

Perhaps you would define 'active', as I find this post really vague and suspect there is a separation betwen - being physically active' and 'exercise'

You could describe targeted age groups, sedentary females, what your aims are, and what you hope to achieve by this survey, and on what you base your figures, and whether or not you realise that, in general terms,

in an area of low car ownership (although it doesn't seem like it at times) and these are generalisations, it is women who are on and off the bus, with babies and children, lifting and pushing, at the market, in the supermarket, walking with children or not, picking them up from school, taking them to extra curricular activities, doing housework more bending and stretching, pulling and tugging and shaking, rushing often to fit everything in before taking the dog in the park/walking to the doctor/dentist/chemist/hairdressers/drycleaners whatever they need to do, then at 10am perhaps walking up to the ED leisure centre to join the gym to find it is closed anyway.

Many will be carrying heavy shopping bags home and perhaps up flights of stairs, whether in a house or block of flats, then putting it all away, bringing the washing in from the line they hung out earlier, strtching and reaching and jerking that clothes post up, all the while being active. It does not end at the front door.

Women with families especially are on the go constantly. Younger women full of energy and zing will already be yoga ing, gym, swim, run, as that is part of their modern way of life. Older ladies will do their own thing but probably walk, as diet and exercise are drummed into them by doctors nurses and women's magazines. Elderly ladies I have no experience of so cannot comment but hope they are content.

This is why your figures are skewed - men exercise as a recreational activity, women unknowingly but to suggest that half of the women surveyed are not as active as the men needs quantifying please.

N>B> I did initially state these were generalisations

However as you are an Insight Team you would know all this.

Iwould be fascinated to know from which age groups these figures come, whether car owners/drivers, respondents exercising for health or habit or joy reasons, dog owners/walkers, gym attendants, cyclists, walk to work, possibly from necessity,

whether a cross section of socio economic groups were interviewed, the relevant outlay for equipment for their chosen form of exercise, and whether the women you interviewed who said they did not exercise offered a reason for this and whether they were pushing a child in a buggy at the time.

Thank you !

[nxjen]

I'd also be interested to find out how the figures of 22% and 46% for women and men respectively were reached. Is it based on self-reporting?

[d.b]

Hi LondonSport.

Some friendly advice... please don't use bit.ly and other link shorteners where they aren't needed. They were invented for twitter where there is a character limit, but clearly the EDF doesn't have any such limit.

Unfortunately there are many advertising and malware scams out there, and link shorteners conceal the true destination of a link. Personally I would be very hesitant to click such a link from an unknown source (e.g. with you all I see is a newly created account posting the same message on the EDF a few times). Assuming you are genuine, I and others would be much happier to click on a link that clearly directed to a real website for an official organization.

Maybe it seems overly suspicious but I'm afraid that is how we have to be on the web these days, so please help us by following good web etiquette, and sharing the real destination of your link.

Thanks

[LondonSport-MW]

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestion - it is a very good one. I completely take on-board your point and will amend accordingly.

Thank you once again,

Matt @ London Sport

[LondonSport-MW]

Thanks for your notes. Sorry I haven't had chance to feedback as of yet. I will get back to you very soon though.

Thanks,

Matt @ London Sport

[Robert Poste's Child]

Looking around me, I find it hard to believe that 46% of men are physically active, if by that you mean doing at least the current recommended minimum of 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least five times a week. More info, as suggested above, would be helpful.

Also, what is Sport London?

[LondonSport-MW]

Hi there,

Firstly who are London Sport! London Sport are a non-for-profit organisation that seeks to support London in becoming the most active city in the World. Working with partners such as the GLA and Sport England, London Sport supports the development of participation in physical activity through engaging key community groups who deliver sport in the boroughs of London.

Further to this, we work with local authorities to understand the requirements of their communities when it comes to physical activity as per this example with Southwark Council. We are working with Southwark to understand the low participation rate among women in the borough and supporting them in developing delivery options to improve activity rates. If you want to find out more about London Sport - the website here is linked below...

https://londonsport.org/

The stat that you mention is actually a Sport England statistic that comes from their Active People survey which you can find in more detail just below should you wish to interrogate the data. Appreciate that it is a significant difference between men and women but the survey is statistically robust and forms a key part of the insight structure that goes towards implement sport delivery in the UK. In terms of the actual question that the stat supports it is - have you participated in sport at least once in the last week.

I have listed below options for more insight should you be interested.

I hope that answers your questions but do feel free to ask anything that you feel that I haven't answered.

http://bit.ly/2bkiw4J - Sport England Active People statistics

http://data.londonsport.org/ - London Sport insight portal

Thanks,

Matt @ London Sport

[LondonSport-MW]

Hi there,

Thank you for engaging with the post! I think a lot of the points that you raise are very valid in terms of the boundaries between being active and exercising. The statistics quoted come from Sport England and there research into participation within exercise in the UK. The quoted figures specifically relate to the question - have you participated in sport once within the last week.

The quoted statistics relate to all women as we don't have the ability to segment according to lifestyle etc. I quote agree with you with regards to the fact that if someone answers no to the above question that it doesn't mean that they are leading an unhealthy inactive lifestyle - the trouble is that when trying to create a standardised model for asking questions on survey there has to be a way to split out groups so in this case as Sport England are specifically looking at participation rates within sport then the question is directly related.

I think honestly the text that I chose is a bit misleading - I should have been specific as it relates to sport participation as opposed to level of inactivity.

If you want to find out more about levels of sports participation, please see the below link to the Sport England Active people survey.

Again - thanks for the engagement with the survey. If you have any further questions, do let me know.

Thank you,

Matt @ London Sport

http://bit.ly/2bkiw4J - Sport England Active people survey link