Beat the Street: A Pilot Evaluation of a Community-Wide Gamification-Based Physical Activity Intervention.

Objective: There is a plethora of published research reporting the wealth and breadth of biopsychosocial benefits of physical activity; however, a recent Cochrane systematic review concluded insufficient evidence for current population level physical activity interventions, citing scalability as a major contributory factor, with many of the interventions failing to reach a substantial proportion of the community. The current study aimed to conduct a pilot evaluation of a technology-enabled, gamification-based intervention called Beat the Street and sought to examine the impact of the Beat the Street intervention on self-reported physical activity.

Methods: In total, n = 329 people completed the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form (I-PAQ-SF) in full at baseline (before the intervention) and follow-up (immediately following the 7-week intervention).

Results: Overall, participants increased their weekly walking by +180 minutes per week (P < 0.001) and their weekly physical activity by +335 minutes per week (P < 0001). Vigorous activity increased by +48 minutes per week (P = 0.004) and moderate activity increased by +60 minutes per week (P < 0.001).

Conclusion: The findings provide preliminary evidence that the Beat the Street intervention may be a promising approach to increasing physical activity at a community-wide level and warrants further investigation.