Dr. Altea Lorenzo-Arribas is a socio-economic statistician at Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) working in collaboration with researchers at the Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutions. She is an elected council member of the Royal Statistical Society and secretary of the History of Statistics Section, as well as a member of the Women Committee of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, and the Spanish Biostatistics Network (Biostatnet). She is passionate about uncovering the hidden stories of women in the history of statistics, and firmly believes in the need for a more equal, diverse and inclusive discipline.
Episode Description
As you reach the end of a long day with an excess of stress how do you recharge? Have you found that a long stroll in the sun or through the woods can provide this renewal? Walking in nature is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Dr. Altea Lorenzo-Arribas.
+Full Transcript
John Bailer As you reach the end of a long day with an excess of stress how do you recharge? Have you found that a long stroll in the sun or through the woods can provide this renewal? Walking in nature is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guest Dr. Altea Lorenzo-Arribas. Altea thank you for joining us today. To start with, how do you even study the potential impacts of walks in nature on well being?
Altea Lorenzo-Arribas
That's a really good question. Well, you just go walking, basically. I guess we can end the show right now. No, there's a bit more to it. But I have to say I was part of this project. The most important part of this project was done by Melissa Marcel, who was actually doing her PhD on this topic, and she went into outdoor works, and started studying how people talk to people and assessing how they were feeling. And then develop a questionnaire where people who could report on the number of births that they saw on the numbers of butterflies is how did they feel at the time? How did they feel when they started the work? How did they feel after the work? And in general trying to work out? What were the factors that made them feel better after they work beyond the actual physical activity? So, I wanted to try and understand how different green environments affected people's people's well being.
Rosemary Pennington
And this, how has he managed to to estimate this relationship between environmental factors and green spaces and wellbeing? Well, what did this study uncover? And I am curious.
Altea Lorenzo-Arribas
This is a very, very good question. And I can't say I remember the set A outcomes of the study. But overall, there was an effect of a higher biodiversity and more natural looking environments, on an increase in the mental well being in these more positive effects, as they call them. Melissa Marcel was the main driver of this work, but there were other other environmental psychologists within the team. And so they work with skiers that they used to work with to measure this positive or negative effect. So they just found this higher relationship between more natural looking environments, more biodiverse, more dense environments that were taking you more away from your routine from your house and your concrete in front of the house. And they were just trying escapes, I guess.
John Bailer
So now, I got to know. Did they also study people taking walks in concrete jungles? I mean, you know, if so, if you're walking in the streets of Edinburgh, you know, dodging tourists, you know, going up the hills? Relaxing, is that you? I mean, you know, because the question for me is, maybe it's just the exercise, maybe it doesn't matter where you walk, it's just the fact that you're walking no matter what.
Altea Lorenzo-Arribas
So yeah, that's a very good question. And it has to say the one necessarily urban parks, but there were parts that were less naturalistic than others. So there were parts that had more built in paths so it was more difficult to get away from it, or perhaps roads were closer so there were factors accounting for that. But I also commenced a different study by other different researchers within the James Hutton Institute as well, that actually looks at the fact that potential noise in urban parks can have on the benefits from wellbeing. So this was more of a love experiment in the sense that you actually responded to a computer, so you were, they were put in front of a computer and you look at the image of a park that was more isolated that you couldn't see buildings. And you have to decide whether that was more common than the other park that was surrounded by buildings. And on top of that, what are the noise, traffic noise, and so they assess as well the fact of noise and both and also distractions in the sense of more urban environments. And also look at the potential effects of this. But I agree they could be easily, easily expanded or looking more at how these factors affect potential wellbeing. But I also agree that it's slightly difficult to disentangle the physical from the mental well being. It's really interesting because wellness is such a and well being is such an important sort of Top of Mind topic, right? These days. And just you hear a lot of anecdotal evidence for people saying, like, I love being out in trees, or I just feel so much calmer when I'm not on a treadmill. And so thinking through like, how do we test wellness, which feels like a squishy concept? I think it for me, it's so fascinating, because there are so many things, so many confounding factors that could be impacting, you know, what you want to test versus what you want you actually get. Yeah, and I guess that the issue here as well was that this sample of people responding to this question is, so they were basically self selected, these were people that were going for work, therefore, they were already likely to enjoy the works and enjoy the benefits of them. So yeah, it's not completely conclusive. And the survey waste to randomize respondents are two, do analysis that can be more statistically robust. But, it was an interesting study in the sense that it reflected some of the more qualitative assessment that they had done before, and that it was a good proof of concept for potentially better design experiments, as I say was something that came second to the problem, the problem was already designed. So it was just analyzing the data but it was definitely interesting food for thought and potentially could be done on a bigger scale and with a more representative sample, not necessarily of people who like the outdoors and like going on walks. Yeah, I could easily imagine the spin offs of this with, you know, children, you know, so children, given the kind of being involved in this and seeing how they respond sort of other other populations that could be part of this. Yes, I've seen within the institute as well, some PhD students work on DPS, so the children wear DPS, what is the record of their physical activities, and as associate link link in the data with, with a location so with green spaces, but also blue spaces. So this was work being done in Aberdeen, actually, everything is on the coast, in the northeast coast of Scotland. And so it was trying to assess that from the point of view of teenagers totally, which was particularly interesting as well with other lessons, but they wanted to be more at home and watching TV, but they wanted to assess how these few visits to parks or debates affected their well being. And then they were asked questions on these smart smartwatches on how they felt. And so it was quite an interesting and potentially one of the one of the more robustly statistically designed studies looking at that.
John Bailer So now, I have to know after you get involved in research like this, do you feel this pressure to go out and walk in nature? And I have, I have to feel better now. I mean, I've got more of a positive effect. Why don't I feel more of a positive effect?
Altea Lorenzo-Arribas I certainly do. But I've also already converted to living there so it's difficult to assess that you're living in Scotland with it. With this great access to the kangaroos to the highlands to the beautiful landscapes, I was already sort of convinced of the benefits that it had for me. But yeah, it certainly makes you appreciate the weather spotting a bird or no mixing copyeditor. No and and you do start thinking more about that sort of aspect to their workouts only how, how is it potentially true that when you see more birds and you know, just cycles or, or opinion, when you see something that is more exotic, then you feel more interested.
John Bailer
Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Short Stories out there. Thank you so much for joining us today. Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.