Essay On Physical Activity In The Community Parks

Participant observation is a data collection methodology that uses qualitative research in the sociology discipline. The objective of participant observation is for one to become familiar with a group of individuals in the community by observing their practices within their cultural environment in a period.
Sociologists use participation observation to study how people cultivate relationships in the society. One can learn about the culture by observing and participating in the ritual practices of a group. This method enables one to formulate firsthand accounts to gain novel insights when one lives with the cultures of study. When a person takes part in the group activities, he or she shares a sense of identity with the group and can allows for successful criticism and review. In a participant observation, a researcher bases the interest on the activity or event according with relevant considerations in the research inquiry. The purpose of this study is to make an observation and investigate the physical activity associated with the variables in the community parks.
Community parks play an important role in facilitating one's engagement in the physical activities. They provide places for people to jog, walk, and have social amenities for other vigorous activities. Parks provide people with an opportunity to interact socially with friends and neighbors. Parks can play a role in facilitating physical activity while other people engage in sedentary behavior.
I will observe the physical activity among groups of people in the community parks to measure the activity and the variable associated with the activity. Community parks attract diverse people of both male and female genders. Features that can influence the use of a community park include the size, accessibility, the quality of the amenities, a reflection on individual preferences, exercise habits, and race.
The community park has different ethnic communities engaging in physical activities. This makes this group to satisfy the acceptable criteria for participatory observation. It is important for all age groups to observe a healthy lifestyle. This calls for regular physical activities at the community parks that available in different cities to promote physical education. I can observe that most adults and especially the minority populations fail to meet this guideline. Among the physical activities that groups in the community parks can engage in include soccer, basketball, tennis, baseball, diamonds, wading pools, indoor gymnasium, skates, and volleyball. This condition of physical inactivity can lead to obesity and other lifestyle disorders. Most children have the exposure of engaging in school physical education since they accrue this activity from school while most adults lack a similar environment.
When I observe the target area in the community park I can see individuals engaging in different physical activities such as walking, standing, sitting, and some lying on the ground. Most of the young children exhibit a lot physical activity as they run around the park. The young children are predominant in the physical activity, unlike older people and qualify as the primary physical activity. The predominant secondary activity is football where both male and female gender participates in this activity.
Community parks are open during the day accessible by people with different cultural backgrounds, age groups, and genders. Normally I make my observations from early in the morning to late in the evening. I use a coding form to supervise the organized activity. I have managed to complete scans on the target area by making independent sweeps. Most people attend the community parks during the evening, followed by afternoon, noon while the least number of people visit the parks during the morning. Latinos visit the parks most followed by black, and white in accordance to ethnicity. Most adults visit the parks followed by children, teenagers, and senior citizens are the least. The playground attracts mostly children while most of the adults are in the lawn areas. More males than females visit the packs while most of them engage in unstructured activities, and few are spectators. Most of the females engage in sedentary activities while a few numbers is walking around the park.
The accessibility of the community parks depends on the socioeconomic status of people. The impoverished people rely on the public, community parks so as to engage in the physical activities. Studying different groups attend to physical activity helps me understand ethnic groups that correlate with health disparities so as to solve equity issues. The commercial park attracts almost equal percentages of minorities and has few poverty households. During the weekdays, I observe that adults engage less vigorous exercises as compared to the weekends when they have more time at their disposal.
Activity theory (AT) is a useful social science theory that depicts psychological theory. The pioneer of this theory is Alexei and Sergei who seek to understand the complex human activities and social situations. The AT theory is one of the major psychological approaches applied in education, ergonomics, and professional training. AT theory considers the entire activity system than involves groups of people in a community. This theory accounts for the culture, environment, and the motivation of a person to engage in physical activity. Groups of people attend to physical activities to enhance wellness and longevity. According to the growing consensus, the environment plays a crucial role in promoting physical activity. The environment has an expansive opportunity to increase physical activity to provide a leeway from the sedentary behaviors associated with unhealthy disorders.
Few numbers of Americans engage in a regular physical activity and this call for a substantial change in the current environment. Activity theory serves as a link between social reality and an individual. A unit analysis of Activity Theory uses object-oriented cultural, human activity to assign rules and mediate artifacts. Physical activity in AT creates tensions and contractions in the system. Some of the key theorist of activity theory provides that the theory focus on practice. This theory uses physical tools to make inferences across social interactions in the society.
Activity theory recognizes the cognitive process in the use of tools to transform any phenomenon. Activity theory describes the actions of a socio-technical system using the following concepts: conventions of the activity, subject, division of labor, tools, and subject. Division of labor includes all the social strata and various hierarchies of the activity. Rules depict the conventions and guidelines for regulating the performance of an activity. Tools refer to the artifacts and the concepts of the system. Frequent interaction with the tools changes the interactions of people especially evolution of knowledge by the experienced people. The subject involves internalization in the memory of an individual. The object-oriented nature suggests the aim of the activity system in consideration with the social and cultural practices.
Activity theory works more as a descriptive tool instead of a predictive tool. This theory shapes human experiences by perfecting their practice in an everyday setting. Some sociologists propose the notion of meditation to shape human experiences using the tool and sign systems. Consciousness unifies the attention, reasoning, and memory. Activity theory has an emphasis on motive in people’s consciousness to enable them perceive things differently.