The relationship between the built environment and habitual levels of physical activity in South African older adults: a pilot study

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious research has shown that the built environment plays a role in habitual levels of physical activity (PA), however much of this research has been conducted in adults and higher income countries. The aim of this pilot study was to examine the strength of association between the built environment and PA in South African older adults.MethodsParticipants were recruited (n = 44, mean age 65 ± 8.5 years) from two suburbs, representing either a high socioeconomic (HSA) or low socioeconomic area (LSA). Self-reported PA, and subjective assessments of neighborhood walkability (Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale, NEWS) was measured. Participants wore Actigraph GT3x accelerometers to objectively quantify PA.ResultsHSA participants reported significantly more leisure-time and less transport PA. Objectively measured and self-reported MVPA was significantly higher in HSA participants. NEWS ‘Land-use Mix’ was negatively associated with leisure-time MVPA, (r2 = 0.20; p < 0.02). In addition, neighborhood aesthetics was positively associated with leisure-time physical activity (r2 = 0.33; p = 0.02). ‘Safety from traffic’ was inversely associated with travel-related PA (r2 = 0.14, p = 0.01). None of the other NEWS scores were associated with PA for the total group.ConclusionLeisure-time and transport-related PA was influenced by socio-economic status. Attributes of the perceived built environment associated with leisure-time and total MVPA in older South Africa adults were different in low- and high- income settings.

The Neighbourhood Physical Environment and Active Travel in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…All positive associations of traffic/pedestrian safety with walking and cycling were found when using objective measures of this environmental attribute [32], while perceived traffic/pedestrian safety yielded nil [59] or unexpected associations [47].…”

“…Most articles reported findings from North America, followed by Europe, Asia, Oceania and South America. Africa was represented by a single article based on a small-scale, pilot study [47]. Over 80% of articles focused on older adults living in urban settings, while only five also included participants from suburban or rural areas [25,35,[48][49][50].…”

“…Sample sizes ranged from 44 to 48,879 [25,47], with eight (19.1%) articles reporting data on less than 300 participants (considered to be a small sample size in this research field) [47,48,[50][51][52][53][54][55]. Less than 30% of articles provided sufficient evidence for the sample representativeness (Table 2).…”

“…Five studies across four continents used a measure of AT combining walking and cycling [32,34,47,53,59].…”

Construct Validity of the Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale for Africa

“…Two studies have provided partial support for the feasibility of using the NEWS questionnaire in Africa by reporting acceptable psychometric properties for its original subscales in Nigerian adults (24) and modest correlations between its subscales and accelerometer and self-reported estimates of physical activity in South African older adults (18). These studies were limited in terms of environmental variability available within any single country, small sample size and utilization of NEWS in its original form or with limited adaptation.…”