Back to Resources

Research Report 435 Walking and cycling: improving combined use of physical activity/health and transport data

Published: | Category: Sustainable land transport , Research programme , Research & reports | Audiences: Local & regional government, Road traffic engineers & consultants

SPARC's Active New Zealand Survey (ANZS) is a high-quality nationwide survey of over 4000 adults collected through face-to-face interviews over 12 months in 2007/08. Although collected mainly to measure levels of sport/recreation activity and to quantify physical activity in general, it includes data of interest to the transport sector on walking and cycling.

This report uses the ANZS data to meet the following transport-related objectives:

  • quantifying how much walking/cycling by New Zealand adults is done mainly for transport purposes compared with sport/recreation purposes
  • quantifying the proportion of New Zealand adults meeting key health guideline for physical activity through active transport alone, and the proportion for whom active transport makes a clear contribution to them meeting such guidelines
  • establishing whether SPARC's ANZS and the Ministry of Transport's NZ Household Travel Survey deliver broadly comparable estimates of transport-related walking and cycling
  • recommending refinements to collection, analysis, and interpretation of transport and physical activity/health data for the benefit of both sectors.

Keywords: active transport, cycling, health benefits, walking

Publication details

  • Author:
  • Published: January 2011
  • Reference: 435
  • ISBN/ISSN: ISBN 978-0-478-37156-7 (print) ISBN 978-0-478-37155-0 (electronic)