Exposure to a sporting or cultural event can have a direct positive impact on physical and mental health for participants and attendees alike, for example through the training they have completed to take part or the simple enjoyment they experience as part of an audience or crowd.
But events can generate (potentially stronger) indirect impacts too. Participation in sport and culture can significantly improve people’s health and wellbeing, and events have strong potential to drive both through their ability to engage people with the idea of participation and foster more positive attitudes towards getting involved.
With increased participation in sport a key focus of public health policy in the UK, being able to demonstrate an event’s ability to support this specific objective can also help attract government funding for future editions. Although many of the measures of health and wellbeing impacts organisers use to do this involve subjective concepts such as quality of life and personal wellbeing, they can still offer important insights into individual perceptions of event benefits, particularly when considered alongside other, more tangible indicators of lifestyle and behaviour change associated with improved health.
What to measure
Overarching measures of events’ health and wellbeing impacts tend to focus on personal perception – asking people how they feel, and how their experience of the event affected them. Indicators recommended by the OECD and ASOIF include:
- Percentage of attendees/participants/local community reporting change in health and wellbeing as a result of event (ASOIF reference SO-CE2.3)
- Percentage of attendees/participants/local community reporting change in quality of life as a result of event
- Percentage of attendees/participants/local community reporting change in health-related behaviour linked to event
Sporting and cultural participation
As well as capturing changes in health and wellbeing reported by their host communities, event organisers can benefit from understanding potential causes of them. Participation in sport and culture is chief among these and a primary objective for many of the public authorities that fund events. UK government research in 2014 valued the wellbeing improvements generated by participation in sport and engagement with the arts at £1,127 and £1,084 per person per year.
Relevant participation indicators recommended by the OECD and ASOIF are:
- Percentage of attendees/host population reporting increased frequency of participation linked to the event
- Number of people engaged in ongoing programmes to facilitate participation within target groups
- Number of new participants in regular physical activity as a result of the event (ASOIF reference SP-OUTCOME1)
- Quantified value of health benefits resulting from the event (ASOIF reference SP-OUTCOME2)
Direct event engagement
The act of hosting a sporting or cultural event is unlikely to drive a significant immediate participation uplift on its own. To maximise participation legacy for the long term, organisers and their partners need to put in place the mechanisms that will draw people towards participation from the initial moment of inspiration their event can spark.
The starting point of that journey is direct engagement with the event – the exposure through which the seed of participation can be planted – and the associated programmes and facilities that can build on this initial connection. Recommended measures of this engagement are:
- Number of attendees from the host community
- Number of host community attendees from disadvantaged or ethnically diverse backgrounds
- Number of community-led event-related projects and activities
- Number of attendees engaging with event-related activities from target segments of the host community (ASOIF reference SO-A2.1)
- Number of local children and young people engaged in event-related outreach programmes (ASOIF reference SO-O2.1)
- Average number of hours per person of involvement in outreach activity (ASOIF reference SO-O2.2)
- Investment in ongoing participation programmes (ASOIF reference SP-SD2.1)
- Investment in community participation facilities (ASOIF reference SP-SD2.2)
Attitudes towards participation
Beyond their ability to engage host communities and attendees, sporting and cultural events are also able to change people’s attitudes towards taking part in these activities. This is the next step events can enable towards increasing participation.
For example, UK Sport research found that 28% of British people who had watched a major sporting event on television during the previous three months said they felt inspired to take part in sport, or do so more often, as a result of their viewing experience. Similarly, research at the Edinburgh Festivals indicated that attendance at a Festival event stimulated ticket-buying for other cultural events subsequently.
The key indicator of event-driven attitudinal change recommended by the OECD and ASOIF is:
- Percentage of attendees/host population reporting increased motivation to participate linked to the event (ASOIF reference SP-SP2.1)
Health and wellbeing impacts: How to measure them
You can assess engagement with events and activities associated with them through a range of quantitative measures drawn from organiser data, such as number of projects established and value of investment in outreach programmes, supplemented by survey-based primary data collection to understand audience demographics and characteristics.
Other measures of health and wellbeing impacts, participation in sport and culture, and attitudes towards it are focused on reported behaviour and opinion, and so are best enabled by surveys of event attendees and members of the host community.
For example, the UK’s Office for National Statistics uses four standard questions to assess people’s subjective wellbeing, which you could use pre- and post-event to identify changes in self-perception. Survey participants are asked to respond to the following on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 10 (completely):
- Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
- Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
- Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?
The focus of some indicators on disadvantaged groups and people of ethnically diverse backgrounds means it is particularly important that surveys are representative of these target demographics and free from subconscious bias. Involving stakeholders from all parts of the community throughout the event lifecycle, from pre-bidding to evaluation, is the best means of mitigating this risk.
Health and wellbeing impact assessment in action
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