Department of Kinesiology

Previous Research

The Community Park Audit Tool (CPAT) – past project

The Community Park Audit Tool (CPAT) was developed as a tool that would enable diverse community stakeholders to audit local parks for their potential to promote physical activity, with an emphasis on the tool being user-friendly and focusing on youth physical activity. The CPAT is a comprehensive yet user-friendly instrument that is six pages long and contains four sections: park information, access and surrounding neighborhood, park activity areas, and park quality and safety. It has demonstrated a high degree of inter-rater reliability with percent agreement for the vast majority of the items in the tool between 80%-90% (Kaczynski, Wilhelm Stanis, & Besenyi 2012). Click on the following links to view the Community Park Audit Tool (CPAT) and guidebook:

Download the Community Park Audit Tool (pdf)

Download the CPAT Guidebook (pdf)

eCPAT – electronic Community Park Audit Tool

This project aims to promote community awareness, visitation, and active use of local park resources in an effort to promote physical activity behavior and improve health outcomes. Observational data collected included information about park features, amenities, quality, and surrounding neighborhoods, as well as photos and geographic data for mapping park resources. In collaboration with the computer science faculty at Georgia Southern University, we created an interactive website based on a consumer model to allow diverse stakeholders to identify, map, and explore community park resources that meet their needs and promote park use. Findings presented included park summary information and key website functionality (e.g., searchable databases, interactive mapping), which capitalize on the benefits of electronic data collection to support individual, organizational, and community decision-making regarding public and community health. Future public health practice or research efforts could incorporate an eCPAT-based website into Park Prescription initiatives to improve community awareness of park features and attributes to increase park-based PA and improve overall community health.