Kelly Biedenweg

Understanding Older Adults’ Motivators and Barriers to Participating in Organized Programs Supporting Exercise Behaviors

Little is known about older adults’ perceptions of organized programs that support exercise behavior. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 39 older adults residing in King County, Washington, who either declined to join, joined and participated, or joined and then quit a physical activity-oriented program. We sought to explore motivators and barriers to physical activity program participation and to elicit suggestions for marketing strategies to optimize participation. Two programs supporting exercise behavior and targeting older persons were the source of study participants: Enhance®Fitness and Physical Activity for a Lifetime of Success. We analyzed interview data using standard qualitative methods. We examined variations in themes by category of program participant (joiner, decliner, quitter) as well as by program and by race. Interview participants were mostly females in their early 70s. Approximately half were non-White, and about half had graduated from college. The most frequently cited personal factors motivating program participation were enjoying being with others while exercising and desiring a routine that promoted accountability. The most frequent environmental motivators were marketing materials, encouragement from a trusted person, lack of program fees, and the location of the program. The most common barriers to participation were already getting enough exercise, not being motivated or ready, and having poor health. Marketing messages focused on both personal benefits (feeling better, social opportunity, enjoyability) and desirable program features (tailored to individual needs), and marketing mechanisms ranged from traditional written materials to highly personalized approaches. These results suggest that organized programs tend to appeal to those who are more socially inclined and seek accountability. Certain program features also influence participation. Thoughtful marketing that involves a variety of messages and mechanisms is essential to successful program recruitment and continued attendance.

Developing Human Wellbeing Indicators in the Puget Sound: Focusing on the Watershed Scale

Planning for and monitoring human wellbeing (HWB) as a component of ecosystem recovery is a growing trend in environmental management. Within the Puget Sound specifically, organizations at the watershed and basin scale have been developing recovery action plans with placeholders for HWB or quality of life indicators. While the actual incorporation of HWB into policy has been limited, there is significant interest to receive guidance for developing indicators and begin addressing HWB in practice. This article describes the results of a pilot process to develop scientifically and practically relevant HWB indicators for the Hood Canal watershed of the Puget Sound. We gathered data on why residents and visitors value the Hood Canal from prior surveys, workshops, and nineteen open-ended interviews with diverse residents from the region. We coded these values into potential indicators of HWB for six domains: Psychological, Cultural, Social, Physical, Economic, and Governance. Three facilitated workshops with expert-stakeholders and an online survey with social scientists helped refine and rate indicators for recommendation to the regional watershed recovery coordinating council. We present the final indicators, detail the methods for getting to them, and discuss how they will be applied to enhance watershed recovery in the Hood Canal watershed. We then describe how this process can be replicated elsewhere and how it will be used to test hypotheses about scalability of HWB indicators in the Puget Sound.

ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEWS AND CASE STUDIES: Mapping Landscape Values: Issues, Challenges and Lessons Learned from Field Work on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington

In order to inform natural resource policy and land management decisions, landscape values mapping (LVM) is increasingly used to collect data about the meanings that people attach to places and the activities associated with those places. This type of mapping provides geographically referenced data on areas of high density of values or associated with different types of values. This article focuses on issues and challenges that commonly occur in LVM, drawing on lessons learned in the US Forest Service Olympic Peninsula Human Ecology Mapping Project. The discussion covers choosing a spatial scale for collecting data, creating the base map, developing data collection strategies, the use of ascribed versus assigned values, and the pros and cons of different mapping formats. Understanding the common issues and challenges in LVM will assist policy makers, land managers, and researchers in designing a LVM project that effectively balances project goals, time and budgetary constraints, and personnel resources in a way that ensures the most robust data and inclusive public participation.

Social Sciences in Puget Sound Recovery

Social Sciences in Puget Sound Recovery Katharine F. Wellman, Kelly Biedenweg & Kathleen Wolf a Northern Economics, Inc. and Puget Sound Partnership Science Panel, Seattle, Washington, USA b Puget Sound Institute, University of Washington, Tacoma, Washington, USA c The U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, Seattle, Washington, USA d College of the Environment (or School of Environmental and Forest Sciences), University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA Published online: 27 Jun 2014.

“The Heartbeat of Our People”: Identifying and Measuring How Salmon Influences Quinault Tribal Well-Being

ABSTRACT Incorporating human well-being metrics into natural resource management (NRM) is a critical component to maintaining social-ecological systems, especially with tribal nations that are deeply connected to natural resources. The Quinault Indian Nation’s well-being, for example, relies on blueback sockeye salmon populations, and is thus an important factor in determining appropriate salmon restoration strategies. Based on 18 interviews with key informants, we identified six domains of well-being related to salmon (Psychological, Social, Cultural, Physical, Governance, and Economic) and 23 interrelated attributes that could be measured to explore and monitor restoration options to provide the most culturally, economically, and biologically sound restoration decision. We demonstrate that salmon is directly tied to QIN subjective definitions of well-being in ways that include yet transcend material benefits. The multitude and magnitude of values associated with salmon furthers the importance of restoring salmon populations and provides additional benchmarks against which to make decisions and measure success.

A brave new world: integrating well-being and conservation

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World promised an enduring, happy society as long as it followed rigid, scientifically defined social rules. Just as this supposed utopia led to immense human suffering as people were constrained to predefined societal roles with limited opportunity for self-expression, conservation initiatives that impose predefined conceptions of well-being onto the poor and politically disadvantaged will meet with tenuous success. In this special feature, we provide a selection of studies that address the how and why of integrating human well-being into conservation practice focusing predominantly on local perspectives. Authors focus on how engagement with local populations is driven, implicitly or explicitly, by the pursuit of a more just conservation and recognition of local voices in deciding their fate.

The science and politics of human well-being: a case study in cocreating indicators for Puget Sound restoration

Across scientific fields, there have been calls to improve the integration of scientific knowledge in policy making. Particularly since the publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, these calls increasingly refer to data on human well-being related to the natural environment. However, policy decisions involve selective uptake of information across communities with different preferences and decision-making processes. Additionally, researchers face the fact that there are important trade-offs in producing knowledge that is simultaneously credible, legitimate, socially relevant, and socially just. We present a study that developed human well-being indicators for Washington State’s Puget Sound ecosystem recovery agency over 3 years. Stakeholders, decision makers, and social scientists were engaged in the identification, modification, and prioritization of well-being indicators that were adopted by the agency for tracking progress toward ecosystem recovery and strategic planning. After substantial literature review, interviews, workshops, and indicator ranking exercises, 15 indicators were broadly accepted and important to all audiences. Although the scientists, decision makers, and stakeholders used different criteria to identify and prioritize indicators, they all agreed that indicators associated with each of 6 broad domains (social, cultural, psychological, physical, economic, and governance) were critical to assess the holistic concept of well-being related to ecosystem restoration. Decision makers preferred indicators that mirrored stakeholder preferences, whereas social scientists preferred only a subset. The Puget Sound indicator development process provides an example for identifying, selecting, and monitoring diverse concepts of well-being related to environmental restoration in a way that promotes recognition, participation, and a fair distribution of environmental benefits across the region.