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parkrun are free events that take place every weekend for anyone to walk, jog or run 5km. They’re designed with the community in mind, to be an inclusive experience welcoming all to take part and to promote wellbeing. Overall, parkrun is seen as a successful public health intervention, however, participation might not be equal across all communities and areas in England.

In this Q&A, Robert Smith, University of Sheffield, discusses the study he and his team carried out, published on Wellcome Open Research, investigating possible disparities in participation in these events, why they occur, and the opportunities to reduce potential barriers.   

Why did you choose to investigate participation in parkrun?

parkrun has been very successful at encouraging people who otherwise may not engage in recreational running/walking. I am a keen runner myself and have seen first hand how successful parkrun has been in engaging non-runners. My mum is a classic couch (she would say gardening) to parkrun success story, so I was very keen to get involved with parkrun UK.

Why is it important to carry out a quantitative analysis?

Very little research has been done into parkrun. Starting by understanding some of the basics around who is participating, which parkrun events are most popular, what factors influence participation and how all of these things have changed over time is useful to guide further, more in depth, research, which is likely to be a mix of qualitative and quantitative.

What variation did you find about the diversity of participants taking part in parkrun?

Our research focuses on participation in parkrun events in England by geographical area. Our first finding is that parkrun participation is higher in communities that are closer to a parkrun (this is one of those findings that is so obvious my family starts to doubt whether I should be working in academia). We were also able to show that there is a steep socioeconomic gradient in parkrun participation. While parkrun has been very successful at encouraging people from all communities to participate in parkrun, participation rates have typically been much higher in less deprived communities than in more deprived communities. There is a separate effect that is independent of socioeconomic status for ethnicity. Areas with a higher proportion of non-white-British residents have lower participation rates than areas with less non-white-British residents.

What are the main barriers to participation?

From our analysis we can see clearly that distance to the nearest event has a huge impact on participation. Again, this is obvious but important for policy, improving geographic access to events will likely increase overall participation. However, starting new events is unlikely to significantly reduce inequalities in participation (by socioeconomic deprivation or ethnicity) since the parkrun events that currently exist are already very equitably located.

How can this be improved and mitigate health inequalities?

More research is under-way to identify how parkrun can have the maximum public health impact. Starting new events in areas with limited access is an obvious policy, our latest paper provides recommendations for the locations of new events. Fortunately, from a research perspective, there is a lot of variation even within more/less deprived communities, and therefore we are able to identify parkrun events in areas of high deprivation that have achieved high levels of participation. In depth analysis of what makes these events so successful may allow us to discover characteristics of these events that can be easily replicated in other locations.