The latest findings from the multi-disciplinary Beats (Built Environment and Active Transport to School) Study team are helping to refine understanding of the barriers to adolescents walking and cycling.
Beats Study lead researcher AUT Adjunct Professor Sandra Mandic said taking distance from school into account had given researchers an insight into attitudes among teenagers and their parents.
"In cities like Dunedin, where more than half of young people live beyond walking and cycling distance from school, it is an important factor when designing infrastructure," Prof Mandic said.
Working with data from a survey of 1401 Dunedin high school pupils, the Beats Study team determined that 455 (32%) lived in reasonable walking distance (up to 2.25km), 286 (21%) lived in cycling distance (2.25km to 4km), and 660 (47%) lived beyond cycling distance (more than 4km).
When attitudes to walking and cycling to school were analysed according to distance, the level of safety concerns rose sharply among those who lived further away, Prof Mandic said.
Among those who lived within cycling distance, 35.4% had safety concerns, rising sharply to 63.9% among those who lived beyond cycling distance.
Social support for active transport decreased with increasing distance to school, whereas personal, environmental and safety barriers increased.
"It is important to understand these concerns and the factors that feed into them, such as traffic volume, unsafe crossings, absence of cycle lanes, and hills," Prof Mandic said.
"With more than 50% of pupils living beyond walking and cycling distance, planners need to mitigate these faction by enabling mixed modes of transport."
The built environment of home and school neighbourhoods, routes to schools, public transport and the choice of schools were all important in decisions on how adolescents travelled to and from school, she said.
Launched by Prof Mandic when she was a lecturer at the University of Otago School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, the Beats Study aims to analyse the reasons for low physical activity levels among adolescents, and to feed into infrastructure and public work to encourage active transport.
Multiple papers have been published through analysis of data collected from pupils at all 12 Dunedin high schools in 2014-15.
Dunedin-based researchers with the Beats Study team continued to work on the follow-up Beats 2 Study, Prof Mandic said.
Data had been collected from five Dunedin high schools so far, and work would be completed with a further seven schools this year.
"All of the schools remain involved ... which is great," she said.
Work continued on multiple research papers, she said.
"There is a lot of activity going on at the moment."
A scientific article on the findings on the impact of distance has been published in the March edition of the Journal of Transport and Health.
It can be viewed via the following link: doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2021.101316
