How active are women who play bingo: a cross-sectional study from the Well!Bingo project

The benefits of physical activity are well established, yet large numbers of people are not sufficiently active to gain health benefits. Certain population groups are less physically active than others, including older women from areas of high economic deprivation. The Well!Bingo project was established with the aim of engaging such women in the development of a health promotion intervention in a bingo club. This paper reports on the assessment of health status, physical activity and sedentary behaviour of women attending a bingo club in central Scotland, UK as part of the Well!Bingo project.

Women attending the bingo club were invited to provide information on demographic characteristics, and self-reported physical activity and sedentary behaviour via a self-complete questionnaire as part of a cross-sectional study (n = 151). A sub-sample (n = 29) wore an accelerometer for an average of 5.7 ± 1.4 days. Differences between younger (under 60 years) and older adults (60 years and over) were assessed using a chi-square test for categorical data and the independent samples t-test was used to assess continuous data (p < 0.05).

The mean age was 56.5 ± 17.7 years, with 57% living in areas of high deprivation (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation quintile one and two). Sixty-three percent of women (n = 87) reported they were meeting physical activity guidelines. However, objective accelerometer data showed that, on average, only 18.1 ± 17.3 min a day were spent in moderate to vigorous physical activity. Most accelerometer wear time was spent sedentary (9.6 ± 1.7 h). For both self-report and accelerometer data, older women were significantly less active and more sedentary than younger women. On average, older women spent 1.8 h more than younger women in sedentary activities per day, and took part in 21 min less moderate to vigorous physical activity (9.4 mins per day).

The findings of this study suggest that bingo clubs are settings that attract women from areas of high deprivation and older women in bingo clubs in particular would benefit from interventions to target their physical activity and sedentary behaviour. Bingo clubs may therefore be potential intervention settings in which to influence these behaviours.