Longer, More Active Commute, but Still not Very Active: Five-Year Physical Activity and Travel Behavior Change in a University Population

Skills and Hills: Factors that Influence Women's and Non-Binary College Students' Decisions to Commute Via Bicycle

College students, who actively travel in the forms of walking and/or bicycling, have shown a wide range of physical and mental health benefits. Despite the known benefits of bicycling, participation is influenced by various demographics, including gender identity, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity. Universities have the potential to promote active travel participation to all populations. The study aimed to understand the environmental and social factors influencing female students' decision to commute via bicycle in a university setting. A volunteer sample of female college students (n=153) were surveyed to identify common themes from the participants' responses regarding why female students do not ride a bicycle to/from campus. Participants self-reported their confidence with riding a bicycle and trips to/from campus per week by mode of transportation. The most common themes noted through open-ended responses were amount of traffic (91.1%, n=82), safety concerns (63.3%, n=57), knowledge and ownership of a bicycle (33.3%, n=30), participants' preferences (15.6%, n=14), and riding conditions (13.3%, n=12). Participants (37.9%, n=58) reported feeling "somewhat unconfident" with riding a bicycle in the State College area. Participants (31.4%, n=48) also reported feeling "somewhat unconfident" with riding a bicycle on campus. Participants reported an average of 6.06 (M=6.06; SD=6.25) weekly walking trips to/from campus as compared to 0.40 (M=0.40; SD=1.57) bicycling trips to/from campus. Female college students are less likely to commute via bicycle to/from campus compared to other groups of students. Infrastructure improvements and implementing resources, such as educational programs, bicycle shares and e-bicycles, have the potential to improve female college student active travel participation.

Reporting physical activity in minutes not bouts: findings from a survey in Australia

OBJECTIVE

Physical activity has been commonly measured as time spent in bouts of at least 10 minutes, however, each minute of physical activity achieved in a day is now regarded as beneficial. This study aims to compare differences in total time spent walking in a week to time spent walking in 10-minute bouts over the same seven-day period.

METHODS

Two self-reported measures of time spent walking were compared: one using time-constrained bouts and the other using total minutes. The first measure comes from the validated Active Australia Survey and reports walking in bouts of 10min or more, the second measure reports total estimated time spent walking.

RESULTS

Data from 4,582 university participants in a census-styled survey were analysed. When comparing the reported minutes of walking in either 10-minute bouts or total minutes, more walking occurs in short bursts with a difference of 117min/week (p<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

This result shows more walking is reported across a week in short bursts of less than 10 minutes. Implications for public health: To monitor trends and evaluate physical activity interventions, reliable and valid measures of physical activity are necessary. Our result questions the usefulness of reporting bouted-walking as a measure which accurately captures population behaviour.