Poster 20: Er brukere og planleggere enig om hva som har betydning for bruk av møteplasser?

To avoid discrepancy between planners and users of POS, youth involved in public participation should contribute to the various phases of the planning process until the POS is completed.

Background: Implementing interventions to reduce physical inactivity and loneliness is a prioritized task among public health professionals, researchers, and policymakers. Built environment interventions, such as the development of public open spaces (POS), can support active living and socialization among youth. However, for such spaces to be successful, they must be planned with the users in mind. Thus, we aimed to explore what youth evaluate as important for using POS and whether their perceptions deviate from municipal planners and other stakeholders involved in the planning process.

Methods: We used concept mapping, which is a two-step mixed method for organizing statements (ideas, opinions, and knowledge) from stakeholders involved in a shared initiative. The initiative under study was the development of POS in six municipalities in Norway. In the first step, 99 statements about what was important for using POS were obtained from brainstorming sessions with municipal employees and professional advisors and from written material derived through youth’s involvement in public participation in the municipalities. In the second step, each statement was rated on a scale from 1 (unimportant) to 5 (very important) by 41 informants (21 employees and advisors and 20 youth between 13-18 years old) based on their perceptions of how important each statement was considered for the POS to be extensively used. In addition, informants sorted all statements into themes, which were analyzed by a hierarchical cluster analysis to obtain final main themes. An average rate describing the importance of each theme was calculated for the different stakeholder groups.

Results: Eight main themes were obtained, and preliminary results showed that the theme "For everybody" (mean=4.08) was most important for the employees/advisors. The youth also perceived that a POS “For everybody” was one of the most important themes (mean=4.09), but they considered "Accessible location" as equally important (mean=4.11). This theme was rated as the fourth most important by the employees/advisors. The employees/advisors considered the themes "A variety of opportunities for activity" (mean=2.57) and "Physical elements that cover various needs" (mean=2.96) to be the least important. These two themes were rated more important by the youth, mean = 3.19 and 3.45 respectively, but a significant difference was observed for the first theme only (p=0.01).

Conclusion: The employees’ and advisors’ assessment of the importance of various themes for the use of POS did not always reflect what youth themselves evaluated as most important for them. This points to the importance of involving youth’s perspectives in planning processes to ensure that their needs are considered to promote use of POS.