DOI: 10.5061/dryad.d2547d821
title: Outdoor activity participation improves adolescents’ mental health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic

description: The COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping human interactions with the natural
 environment, generating profound consequences for health and well-being.
 To assess the effects of COVID-19 on the outdoor recreation participation
 and well-being of adolescents we conducted a nationally representative
 survey of youth ages 10-18 across the United States (n = 624) using a
 Qualtrics XM panel between April 30 and June 15, 2020. Survey questions
 focused on frequency of participation in several types of outdoor
 activities before and during the pandemic. Activity categories included
 outdoor play activities (e.g., running, biking), nature-based activities
 (e.g., camping, fishing), and spending outdoor time with family. We
 assessed changes in the psychological health of youth using a four-item
 subjective well-being scale validated by the World Health Organization.
 Paired t-tests revealed significant decreases in both outdoor recreation
 participation (64% of youth reported declines) and subjective well-being
 (52% reported declines) during the pandemic. A regression model examining
 correlates of changes in subjective well-being (R2=0.42) revealed strong
 associations between subjective well-being and changes in outdoor play
 activities (B=0.44, p&lt;0.001) and changes in nature-based activities
 (B=0.21, p=0.016). Youth who continued to participate in these activities
 during COVID-19 reported significantly smaller drops in subjective
 well-being, whereas youth whose outdoor participation waned were more
 negatively impacted by the pandemic. Furthermore, youth who reported high
 levels of outdoor play activity participation before the pandemic were
 also less likely to experience post-COVID-19 declines in subjective
 well-being. These results contribute to our understanding of adolescent
 psychological reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as highlighting
 the critical role that time outdoors and time in nature can play in
 bolstering youth resilience to environmental stressors.
description: <strong>Data Collection:</strong>
 The sample for this study was prepared using an online panel
 provided by Qualtrics XM through a stratified convenience sampling
 approach. The Qualtrics panel provided for this study drew from a national
 pool (50 states, Puerto Rico) with demographic quotas for gender (male,
 female, non-binary and other), race (White, Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific
 Islander, Native American, other), and community type (rural area, small
 city or town, suburb near a large city, and large city) representative of
 the 2019 U.S. census data. Sampling was restricted to parents and their
 children between the ages of 10-18 years old. Data
 collection began April 30, 2020 and closed June 15, 2020. Data were
 collected through separate but linked parent and child survey instruments
 that were created and administered using the Qualtrics platform. Surveys
 were administered to qualifying parents who completed the parent version
 of the survey before being prompted to hand their device to their
 qualifying child to complete the adolescent version of the survey. Prior
 to starting the survey, parents were provided with a linked and
 downloadable consent form acknowledging their consent to participate and
 their consent for their child to participate. Adolescents were also
 provided with an age appropriate assent form acknowledging their consent
 to participate. <strong>Data
 Processing:</strong> Data were downloaded into
 Microsoft Excel from the Qualtrics XM dashboard. We used listwise deletion
 to remove 257 responses that were either straight-line responses
 (answering the same for all questions) or nonsensical text responses
 (related to open text questions), resulting in a final sample of 624. When
 a survey response was removed from the sample, the corresponding parent or
 child survey was also removed. Parent and child surveys were linked using
 Qualtrics embedded dyad codes.
description: The Readme file Jackson_COVIDSWB2020_Readme.txt contains
 information about the dataset. The accompanying data key
 (COVIDSWBKey2020.csv) includes the questions that correspond to each
 variable as well as the response scales for each question. The
 accompanying Stata do-file (COVIDSWBStata2020.do) contains the Stata code
 for statistical analysis. The response scale for the
 general outdoor activity items (cActivitypre, cActivitypost) were recoded
 so that “less than one time per month” = 0.25, “1-2 times per month” =
 0.5, “1 time per week” = 1, “2-4 times per week” = 3, and “5 or more times
 per week” = 5. We recoded these values to approximate the actual number of
 outdoor activities adolescents participated in during the week.
 The response scale for the item “Has spending time outdoors in
 nature helped you deal with the stress caused by practicing social
 distancing because of the coronavirus outbreak?” (cStress), was also
 recoded so that the responses “Not at all” and “Does not apply” were
 grouped together as “No”, while the responses “Somewhat” and “Definitely”
 were grouped together as “yes”. This helped to streamline the analysis and
 clarify directionality of the relationship between outdoor activity
 participation and SWB. Children identifying as more
 than one race were grouped into a single “two or more races”
 category. State of residence data was broken into 4
 geographic regions delineated by the U.S. Census Bureau, with Alaska and
 Hawaii being added to the West region and Puerto Rico being added to the
 South region (South: AL, AR, DC, DE, FL, GA, KY, LA, MD, MS, NC, OK, PR,
 SC, TN, TX, VA, WV) (Northeast: CT, ME, MA, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT)
 (Midwest: IL, IN, IA, KS, MI, MN, MO, NE, ND, OH, SD, WI) (West: AK, AZ,
 CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, WA, WY). The cleaned dataset was
 analyzed with Stata 14.1. The variables age, grade, and
 state have been removed from the supplied version of the dataset to comply
 with Dryad human subjects guidelines.