Non-health club user research to be unveiled at SIBEC

Research into the beliefs and perceptions of non-health club users will be unveiled at SIBEC UK 2004.

Leisure-Net Solutions is interviewing more than 1,000 people to discover their attitudes towards exercise and activity and the perceived and actual barriers preventing them from joining health clubs.

“We aim to see how physical activity campaigns affect people’s attitudes and perceptions,” said Mike Hill, managing director of Leisure-Net.

“For example, are the mixed messages about what people need to do and how they need to do it creating an additional barrier to usage of centres and clubs? Or will a general increase in activity levels inevitably spill over into increased facility usage?”

The research will look at the impact of government, public and private initiatives launched to encourage exercise and for this reason Leisure-Net is conducting some of its research in Newcastle, where Sport England’s pilot activity campaign, Everyday Sport, has been running for the last few months.

Research is also being carried out in Kirklees in Yorkshire and Taunton Deane in Somerset. “We want to find out people’s usage of health clubs and what would encourage them to use a gym,” said Hill “We also want to know if any of the current initiatives encouraging activity actually have any effect on people.”

The findings of the research will be announced at the opening forum of SIBEC UK 2004, which takes place in November.