Health, Wellbeing and Women’s Experiences at parkrun Australia: A Mixed Methods Approach

Physical inactivity is a concern worldwide, including in Australia where it leads to the burden of many diseases. Gender inequalities in physical activity exist, with women being less active than men. A potential solution to inactivity are community-based physical activity initiatives, such as parkrun. Parkrun organises free, weekly 5k events, where participants can run, walk or volunteer. Australia is parkrun’s second largest territory with about 50,000 weekly participants. This thesis explored the health and wellbeing impact of parkrun for participants, especially for women. Data were collected through the first large-scale health and wellbeing survey in Australia, with 33,286 responses analysed. The survey included questions on health and wellbeing, motives for running/walking and volunteering as well as the perceived impact of running/walking and volunteering at parkrun. Survey responses were matched to participants’ parkrun data, and the sample was weighted to represent the parkrun population. Adjusted logistic regressions explored whether gender predicted the relevance of motives and the perceived impact of parkrun: Men valued the competition elements of parkrun; whereas women were more likely to report participating in parkrun due to the non-judgemental and physically safe environment parkrun provides. Women were also more likely to report that parkrun participation has a positive impact on their confidence. To contextualise the survey findings, 29 women were interviewed, the first parkrun research to solely focus on women’s participation. Using reflexive thematic analysis, four themes were constructed from the data: 1) parkrun can be whatever you want it to be 2) women know what to expect at parkrun 3) parkrun facilitates belonging and connection, and 4) parkrun is an opportunity for growth and change. The survey findings and interview data were discussed in relation to each other before final conclusions were given. Finally, recommendations for other community-based physical activity initiatives and future parkrun survey research were given