Apr 26, 2023·edited Apr 26, 2023Liked by Becca Katz
Thank you for sharing this evolving paradigm of nature-based learning. The many dimensions allow almost any activities where the outdoors is involved in some way shape or form.
Have you considered perhaps thinking about making a "holistic goodness" scale that would tie to the levels of each? Is going outdoors for five minutes in a park as effective as going out in Nature for 75 days? Maybe because a quick trip to the park is something that can be done with little thought and done quite frequently, it gives the same level of goodness...or possibly greater.
The more we can "quantify" the goodness, the easier it will be to make the pitch to those looking for objective(ish) data :) I believe that Doctor Outdoors (Melissa S) would be a great resource to help with this process.
These are good questions Justin! This study - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3 - shows that self-reported health benefits were significantly greater if folks got at least 120 min/week. What's interesting is that these self-reported gains leveled off in the 200-300 minutes/week range showing "no further gain." David Strayer at the University of Utah has done some research on the "3-day effect" showing some next-level gains that wouldn't be reflected in this type of study. Florence Williams brought some attention to this with her book The Nature Fix (she also has a podcast that's on my "bookshelf" at the moment. I highly doubt anyone is studying folks who spend 75+ days in Captial-N Nature or "Capital W Wilderness." The sample size is probably just too small! :P
There's great work happening in the world of quantifying this. Dr. Outdoors is rad. Also worth checking out the work coming out of NatureQuant (Jared Hanley) - as they try to quantify the goodness :).
Thank you for sharing this evolving paradigm of nature-based learning. The many dimensions allow almost any activities where the outdoors is involved in some way shape or form.
Have you considered perhaps thinking about making a "holistic goodness" scale that would tie to the levels of each? Is going outdoors for five minutes in a park as effective as going out in Nature for 75 days? Maybe because a quick trip to the park is something that can be done with little thought and done quite frequently, it gives the same level of goodness...or possibly greater.
The more we can "quantify" the goodness, the easier it will be to make the pitch to those looking for objective(ish) data :) I believe that Doctor Outdoors (Melissa S) would be a great resource to help with this process.
These are good questions Justin! This study - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3 - shows that self-reported health benefits were significantly greater if folks got at least 120 min/week. What's interesting is that these self-reported gains leveled off in the 200-300 minutes/week range showing "no further gain." David Strayer at the University of Utah has done some research on the "3-day effect" showing some next-level gains that wouldn't be reflected in this type of study. Florence Williams brought some attention to this with her book The Nature Fix (she also has a podcast that's on my "bookshelf" at the moment. I highly doubt anyone is studying folks who spend 75+ days in Captial-N Nature or "Capital W Wilderness." The sample size is probably just too small! :P
There's great work happening in the world of quantifying this. Dr. Outdoors is rad. Also worth checking out the work coming out of NatureQuant (Jared Hanley) - as they try to quantify the goodness :).
Thanks for reading and engaging!