The Australian Park Life Survey invited participants to share their experiences of park use by mapping the parks they visited and answering questions about the activities they undertook and how they engaged with those spaces.
Participants identified their home address, or nearest street intersection if they preferred not to provide their full street address. The focus of the Australian Park Life survey was concerned with park use in a ‘usual week’ to capture habitual, typical, repeated, regular or ordinarily occurring behaviour concerning park use. A screening question determined if the participant was a ‘park user’. Participants who indicated they used parks’ daily’, ‘weekly’ or ‘monthly’ were asked to map the park/s they use.
After mapping the park they used, a set of questions specific to the use of that park were presented. This included: (1) the activities undertaken; (2) usual frequency of visitation; (3) usual duration of visit; (3) usual day/s of the week the park is visited; (4) who they usually visited the park with; (5) the usual mode of transport to the park; (6) the usual origin of the journey to that park. If they visited the park from a ‘work’ or ‘other’ location another mapping window was displayed, and they were asked to map this location. The comprehensive list of 23 park-based activities or recreational experiences participants could choose from covered four broad conceptual categories of activities and anticipated benefits: physical, social, psychological and environmental.
Participants who indicated they used parks ‘rarely / a few times per year’ or ‘don’t use parks’ were directed to a question that prompted them to select reasons why they do not typically use parks. An open-ended question asked them to indicate what would make them use parks.
Results from the 4122 participants in Western Australia who mapped and described 6039 parks visits are now available to explore in the Thriving Perth Portal.
The survey results are displayed by: (1) the usual duration of visit in the park, (2) mode of transport to the park, and (3) the distance travelled from home or usual origin (i.e., work) to the park. Clicking on a mapped park point will display the full survey results.
More information on the Australian Park Life survey and the development of a national spatial layer of public open space can be found here: The Australian Park Life project: Development of a nationally standardised spatial layer and public participatory GIS for greenspace in Australian capital cities.
To find out more about the Australian Park Life Survey and explore opportunities to use the data contact A/Prof Paula Hooper.