What is SOPARC?

The System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) is a direct observation tool to assess physical activity, general park use, and contextual factors in community parks and recreation centers. SOPARC has been validated and found to be a reliable indicator of park use (Cohen et al., 2013).

How much observation is enough refining the administration of Soparc?

While SOPARC provides a snapshot of an hourly count and duplicates counts of park users who stay more than one hour, we found that selecting as few as 12–16 hours a week of measurement appears sufficiently robust for estimating 96 hours of park use and physical activity over a week’s time.