Abstract
This thesis makes a point of departure from positivist studies on the relationships between socioeconomic living environments and health-related behaviours, to a social constructionist conceptualisation and analysis of the reflexive ways in which people perceive and interact with their living contexts in ways that ultimately affect their health. Berger and Luckman’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966) was employed as the philosophical paradigm to direct a methodological emphasis on the interactions and processes via which patterns of practice become institutionalised in particular social contexts over time. Their key concepts of historicity, habituation, and institutionalisation were used to guide the selection, collection, and analysis of data in an investigation into how norms around physical activity were formed in a lower socioeconomic housing group living in a new urban setting. A social constructionist grounded theory approach was used to conduct an inductive analysis on both online and face-to-face data sources from a group of tenants who had recently moved from traditionally poorer neighbourhoods to a mixed-tenure, inner-city new urban village with a number of resources such as pathways and parks designed to promote physical activity.

The findings are presented in three published papers. The first paper, entitled Blogging about Jogging: Digital stories about physical activity from residents in a new urban environment with implications for future content and media choices in population health communication exhibits an analysis of  data collected on a ‘blog’ entitled ‘The Effects of a New Urban Context on Health’. The paper advocates a social constructionist analysis of the role or ‘place’ of physical activity in lower socioeconomic living contexts, in order to ameliorate current challenges promoting physical activity there. Findings depict barriers to being more active at the individual, neighbourhood, and broader ecological levels, with a general consensus of mistrust and disbelief surrounding the promotion of physical activity for improved health and well-being. A second paper, entitled The Kelvin Grove Urban Village: What aspects of design are important for connecting people, place, and health? describes an analysis of the online data, as well as emerging data from in-depth interviews. Important findings about the contrast in experiences between living areas of condensed poverty, wherein neighbourhood contextual effects on health-related behaviours are intensely detrimental; versus living in close proximity to an aesthetically pleasing, reputable, highly resourced neighbourhood with a mixed-tenure population, are reported. Findings reveal the role of aspects of a new urban design in alleviating some of the negative contextual effects on health propagated within poorer residential groups. Finally, a paper entitled My Place through My Eyes: A social constructionist approach to researching the relationships between socioeconomic living contexts and physical activity reported findings from a face-to-face intensive study on a small group of women living in the government supported housing option within the new urban village. Data was collected on participants’ current and past experiences to reveal how various living and social contexts had contributed to their high levels of inhibition in relation to physical activity. An exploration of how their shared historicity contributed to the habituation and institutionalisation of physical activity as a negative construct in their lives was revealed in the analysis. This thesis makes a substantive, conceptual, and methodological contribution to future research efforts interested in how physical activity is conceptualised and constructed amongst a lower socioeconomic group, and why this is. Further, it highlights that socioeconomic living contexts tend to shape dispositions, attitudes, and lifestyles in unique ways that result in worse health and life chances for those who occupy them. The findings have implications for urban design, health promotion, and health inequalities research.

Team

• Julie-Anne Carroll (PhD Candidate)
• Assoc. Prof. Barbara Adkins (Principal Supervisor)
• Assoc. Prof. Elizabeth Parker (Associate Supervisor)

Publications
Carroll, J.-A., Foth, M., & Adkins, B. (2009, in press). Traversing urban social spaces: How online research helps unveil offline practice. In J. Hunsinger, M. Allen & L. Klastrup (Eds.), International Handbook of Internet Research. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. Accepted 15 Mar 2008. (eprints >)

Carroll, J.-A., Adkins, B., Foth, M., Parker, E., & Jamali, S. (2008). My Place through My Eyes: A social constructionist approach to researching the relationships between socioeconomic living contexts and physical activity. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 3(4), 204-218. (eprints >)

Carroll, J.-A., Adkins, B., Foth, M., & Parker, E. (2007, Sep 6-8). The Kelvin Grove Urban Village: What aspects of design are important for connecting people, place, and health? Paper presented at the International Urban Design Conference, Gold Coast, QLD. (eprints >)