Stair Wraps : Perceived Effectiveness for Increasing Physical Activity
Creators: name: Ross, Brynley
name: Nogacz, Larissa
name: Repole, Natalie
name: English, Rylee
name: Koo, Stephen
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2020

description: Current physical activity guidelines recommend adults to engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most if not all days of the week, but the lack of such physical activity has caused an increased risk in mortality in Canada. The UBC SEEDS Sustainability Stair Intervention Project has been put in place to explore the impact of stair and elevator wraps as physical interventions. Following studies which analyzed factors that motivated people to take the stairs, it was found that stair wrap interventions that altered the aesthetics and visibility of the stairwell were effective in increasing stair use. In the early stages of our project, we wanted to gather data from specific groups and cohorts to see how they perceived stair wraps, and to provide baseline data for UBC SEEDS to further examine results of any future stair wrap interventions. We wanted to focus on first- and second-year students as it is in the initial years of university that habitual behaviors are set for the remaining campus years. Unfortunately due to the coronavirus, the campus was closed before we could collect data, and for the health and safety of the community we decided to change our data collection method to be promoted through social media platforms and text messages instead. We gathered quantitative data to determine if UBC students were aware of the stair wrap that was installed temporarily in the NEST building and their opinions on its effectiveness. Over 40 students’ responses were gathered through a survey using the Qualtrics platform which included multiple choice and likert-scale questions, as well as open-ended response options. Questions served to provide a view of students’ stair-use patterns, reasons for taking the stairs, the perceived effectiveness of stair-wraps, and what could be done to increase their stair use. The shift from approaching campus students in-person to people we were in contact with led to a greater percentage of upper-years partaking in the survey, with a larger percentage of them being Kinesiology students. Due to this skew in our sample, we analyzed our responses as a whole without creating a sub-group to generalize our findings. Our findings indicated that convenience is one of the biggest factors for why campus students preferred taking the elevator over the stairs. However, our project was fairly inconclusive in regards to the effectiveness of the past stair wrap intervention due to the coronavirus pandemic. While some participants may choose to take the stairs over the elevator, these values were not statistically significant due to the lack of sample size. It is recommended that future research is conducted on improving stairwell convenience as well as directional signage that indicates where stairwells along with the health benefits associated with taking the stairs. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”