Survey finds swimmers’ mental wellbeing is above average
10th April, 2019
When Women in Adventure asked more than 2,000 women how they spend their time outdoors and the effect this has on their mental wellbeing, 99 percent agreed that outdoor activities have a positive impact.
The survey examined how participation in adventure sports can impact other areas of women’s lives, and which sports have the most significant effect on wellbeing.
Swimmers reported above average scores for happiness, life satisfaction and how worthwhile they perceived their activities to be. Their reported anxiety levels were lower than the average.
When these factors were combined, with each given equal weight, swimming ranked joint third with canoeing in the top ten outdoor sports for promoting mental wellbeing.
Hetty Key, lead researcher and founder of Women in Adventure, said: “Instinctively I think we know that spending time outdoors is good for us. When I launched the survey, I felt there was a lack of accessible information showing how and to what extent the outdoors impacts our lives.”
Hetty partnered with Dr Ruth Farrar, Director of Shextreme and senior lecturer in creative media and enterprise at Bath Spa University, to facilitate the survey.
“Now the results are published, clearly showing the benefit the outdoors has on our mental wellbeing, I want to use them to drive positive change,” said Hetty. “I hope activity providers and those who are invested in promoting the outdoors will utilise this information to help widen participation, improve accessibility and increase diversity.”
The full results of the survey are available here.
Liz Lowe
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Twitter: @women_adventure
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