Cheryl W Thompson
Biographic Data
| ID | 237312 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cheryl W Thompson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cheryl W |
| FAMILY NAME | Thompson |
| SIGNATURE | THOMPSON C W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Edinburgh College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9563-0026 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 140 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1913 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
From barriers to bridges: Community researchers as methodological innovators in health intervention evaluation
Gathering consistent and meaningful health intervention evaluation data from structurally disadvantaged communities presents significant challenges. Traditional external evaluation approaches often fail to capture authentic experiences due to linguistic barriers, cultural differences, and mistrust of formal systems. This study presents a systematic exploration of community researcher (CR) approaches across three diverse organisational contexts, e…
The green gap framework: Understanding non and low use of urban greenspaces
Despite the well-documented benefits of engaging with nature, up to a quarter of the UK population rarely utilises their urban greenspaces. This is despite evidence that those who engage the least with greenspace could derive the most significant health benefits from such interactions. Addressing this gap is a focus of the GroundsWell consortium, a large research programme that aims to transform access to urban green and blue spaces to improve he…
This is where I can be myself’: Places that enable flourishing in older age
Access to neighbourhood places is considered an important part of enabling older adults to age in place. However, understanding of the enabling features of places and how they generate the conditions necessary for the experience of wellbeing and flourishing amongst older people remains limited. Drawing on the concept of 'enabling places' (Duff, 2011, 2012) this paper examines how older adults negotiate physical, social and affective place resourc…
Reflections on avoiding ‘bungalow legs’: Active ageing and the built environment
I write these reflections as the evidential basis for ‘Blue Zones’ (districts round the world where more people than usual live past 100 years) has been challenged (Hafner 2024; Newman 2024). It is
Older Adults’ Outdoor Activities and Quality of Life: A Personal Projects Approach
‘Being there’ is what matters: Methodological and ethical challenges when undertaking research on the outdoor environment with older people during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic
This paper reflects on adapting research methods and processes during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on our experiences of conducting research on the outdoor environment with older people (aged 50+) living in Scotland. First, we discuss the challenges to the organisation of research experienced in the context of changing government and university guidelines and managing delays to planned research timelines. The shift toward remote methods stimula…
How Much Did Urban Park Use Change under the Covid-19 Pandemic? A Comparative Study of Summertime Park Use in 2019 and 2020 in Edinburgh, Scotland
The importance of urban parks was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, when a number of restrictions on social gatherings were in place and people's movements were often restricted to their local neighbourhood. This study examined the changes in patterns of park use before and during COVID-19 to understand how the pandemic influenced such use. The methods involved behaviour observation and mapping, to offer a comparison of the use of parks i…
Are Rurality, Area Deprivation, Access to Outside Space, and Green Space Associated with Mental Health during the Covid-19 Pandemic? A Cross Sectional Study (CHARIS-E)
The study investigated if rurality, area deprivation, access to outside space (Study 1), and frequency of visiting and duration in green space (Study 2) are associated with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and examined if individual demographics (age, gender, COVID-19 shielding status) and illness beliefs have a direct association with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. A serial, weekly, nationally representative, cross-section…
Perspectives on “Novel” Techniques for Designing Age-Friendly Homes and Neighborhoods with Older Adults
Worldwide, growth in the older population creates a pressing need to develop supportive environments that enhance quality of life as people age. Too often, built environments present barriers and challenges to older adults that compromise independent living and adversely affect health and life outcomes. Designing homes, buildings, and neighborhoods with older adults, through exercises in participatory or co-design, could help ensure that environm…
Co-production of “nature walks for wellbeing” public health intervention for people with severe mental illness: Use of theory and practical know-how
We developed a theoretically-informed, evidence-based nature walks programme in a timely and relatively low-cost manner relevant in an era of growing mental illness and funding austerity. Further research is required to test if the intervention is effective and if this approach to intervention development works
Association Between the Activity Space Exposure to Parks in Childhood and Adolescence and Cognitive Aging in Later Life
The exposure to green space in early life may support better cognitive aging in later life. However, this exposure is usually measured using the residential location alone. This disregards the exposure to green spaces in places frequented during daily activities (i.e., the 'activity space'). Overlooking the multiple locations visited by an individual over the course of a day is likely to result in poor estimation of the environmental exposure and…
Life course of place: A longitudinal study of mental health and place
A multitude of studies have demonstrated that individual circumstances throughout life influence subsequent health and well‐being outcomes. The life‐course perspective emphasises that health is affected by the accumulation of social and economic (dis)advantages over an individual's life but, importantly, also that there can be critical periods where the effects of exposure can be greater. Yet few researchers have applied a life‐course perspective…
Green space and cognitive ageing: A retrospective life course analysis in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936
International evidence suggests that green space has beneficial effects on general and mental health but little is known about how lifetime exposure to green space influences cognitive ageing. Employing a novel longitudinal life course approach, we examined the association between lifetime availability of public parks and cognitive ageing. Lifetime residential information was gathered from the participants of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 using a…
Effects of Urban Green Space on Environmental Health, Equity and Resilience
Modern urban life style is associated with chronic stress, insufficient physical activity and exposure to anthropogenic environmental hazards. Urban green space, such as parks, playgrounds, and residential greenery, can promote mental and physical health and reduce morbidity and mortality in urban residents by providing psychological relaxation and stress alleviation, stimulating social cohesion, supporting physical activity, and reducing exposur…
Accessibility and use of peri-urban green space for inner-city dwellers: A comparative study
The Uncommon Impact of Common Environmental Details on Walking in Older Adults
Walking is the most common form of physical activity amongst older adults. Older adults' walking behaviors have been linked to objective and perceived neighborhood and street-level environmental attributes, such as pavement quality and mixed land uses. To help identify components of walkable environments, this paper examines some of these environmental attributes and explores their influence on this population's walking behaviors. It draws on foc…
The Aging Urban Brain: Analyzing Outdoor Physical Activity Using the Emotiv Affectiv Suite in Older People
This research directly assesses older people's neural activation in response to a changing urban environment while walking, as measured by electroencephalography (EEG). The study builds on previous research that shows changes in cortical activity while moving through different urban settings. The current study extends this methodology to explore previously unstudied outcomes in older people aged 65 years or more (n = 95). Participants were recrui…
Understanding Relationships between Health, Ethnicity, Place and the Role of Urban Green Space in Deprived Urban Communities
Very little is known about how differences in use and perceptions of urban green space impact on the general health of black and minority ethnic (BME) groups. BME groups in the UK suffer from poorer health and a wide range of environmental inequalities that include poorer access to urban green space and poorer quality of green space provision. This study used a household questionnaire (n = 523) to explore the relationship between general health a…
Mitigating Stress and Supporting Health in Deprived Urban Communities: The Importance of Green Space and the Social Environment
Environment-health research has shown significant relationships between the quantity of green space in deprived urban neighbourhoods and people's stress levels. The focus of this paper is the nature of access to green space (i.e., its quantity or use) necessary before any health benefit is found. It draws on a cross-sectional survey of 406 adults in four communities of high urban deprivation in Scotland, United Kingdom. Self-reported measures of …
Green Space and Stress: Evidence from Cortisol Measures in Deprived Urban Communities
Contact with green space in the environment has been associated with mental health benefits, but the mechanism underpinning this association is not clear. This study extends an earlier exploratory study showing that more green space in deprived urban neighbourhoods in Scotland is linked to lower levels of perceived stress and improved physiological stress as measured by diurnal patterns of cortisol secretion. Salivary cortisol concentrations were…
More green space is linked to less stress in deprived communities: Evidence from salivary cortisol patterns
Green space has been associated with a wide range of health benefits, including stress reduction, but much pertinent evidence has relied on self-reported health indicators or experiments in artificially controlled environmental conditions. Little research has been reported using ecologically valid objective measures with participants in their everyday, residential settings. This paper describes the results of an exploratory study (n = 25) to esta…
Suicide Notes Among Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos
Suicide is a significant health problem, yet many questions regarding suicide remain unanswered. One of the most frequently asked questions is related to motive: "Why did that person complete suicide?" We explored motivations for completing suicide, especially with regard to cultural differences, by analyzing suicide notes written by Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos in New Mexico. Five categories emerged describing motivation: feelings of …
Emerging relationships between design and use of urban park spaces
The natural outdoors and health: Assessing the value and potential contribution of secondary public data sets in the UK to current and future knowledge
Linking landscape and health: The recurring theme
Green space and cognitive ageing: A retrospective life course analysis in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936
International evidence suggests that green space has beneficial effects on general and mental health but little is known about how lifetime exposure to green space influences cognitive ageing. Employing a novel longitudinal life course approach, we examined the association between lifetime availability of public parks and cognitive ageing. Lifetime residential information was gathered from the participants of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 using a…
Linking landscape and health: The recurring theme
Life course of place: A longitudinal study of mental health and place
A multitude of studies have demonstrated that individual circumstances throughout life influence subsequent health and well‐being outcomes. The life‐course perspective emphasises that health is affected by the accumulation of social and economic (dis)advantages over an individual's life but, importantly, also that there can be critical periods where the effects of exposure can be greater. Yet few researchers have applied a life‐course perspective…
Outdoor Environments, Activity and the Well-Being of Older People: Conceptualising Environmental Support
Although the outdoor environment provides older people with various opportunities to enhance their quality of life (QOL), few studies have investigated the extent to which this environment is influential in practice. In order to enable empirical research on this topic, in this paper we propose and examine the concept of environmental support. On the basis of a review of recent literature in gerontology, public health, environmental psychology, la…
Development of the Scottish Walkability Assessment Tool (SWAT)
Place mapping with teenagers: Locating their territories and documenting their experience of the public realm
The purpose of this paper is to present, analyse and critique a research method, ‘place mapping’, used to document and understand teenagers' experience, use and perception of public spaces. Researchers in two case study sites, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Sacramento, CA, employed conventional street maps as a basis for eliciting and recording young people's spatial experiences. This method offers an effective mechanism for generating and structuring …
It Gets You Away From Everyday Life”: Local Woodlands and Community Use—What Makes a Difference
This paper explores who uses woodlands near their homes, why they visit, what benefits they believe they obtain and what makes the difference between them choosing to visit or not. In the research, supported by the Forestry Commission, a multi-method, user-led approach was used, based on focus groups, questionnaire surveys and on-site observation in relation to five different communities in the central belt of Scotland. The conclusions demonstrat…
The Aging Urban Brain: Analyzing Outdoor Physical Activity Using the Emotiv Affectiv Suite in Older People
This research directly assesses older people's neural activation in response to a changing urban environment while walking, as measured by electroencephalography (EEG). The study builds on previous research that shows changes in cortical activity while moving through different urban settings. The current study extends this methodology to explore previously unstudied outcomes in older people aged 65 years or more (n = 95). Participants were recrui…
The natural outdoors and health: Assessing the value and potential contribution of secondary public data sets in the UK to current and future knowledge
Older Adults’ Outdoor Activities and Quality of Life: A Personal Projects Approach
School playground design: A projective approach with pupils and staff
This paper presents original findings from a project for the landscape improvement of two primary schools’ grounds using a Projective technique developed at Heriot‐Watt University by Aspinall based on the work of Kelly (1955) in Personal Construct Psychology and Peled (1990) in Ecoanalysis. Pupils and staff at both schools were invited to respond to photographs of possible playground scenes and indicate how design elements important to them relat…
Relation of Jobbers and Commission Men To the Handling of Produce
So long as each locality produces its own food supply, the probleni of distribution is very simple. Either there is no distribution at all, viz: each consumer produces his own supply or there is direct sale by producer to consumer as in the old time fairs, or there is at most a local merchant who acts as an intermediary. A jobber or commission man does not fit into such a simple local economy and this explains the absence of such middlemen until …
School playground design: A projective approach with pupils and staff
This paper presents original findings from a project for the landscape improvement of two primary schools’ grounds using a Projective technique developed at Heriot‐Watt University by Aspinall based on the work of Kelly (1955) in Personal Construct Psychology and Peled (1990) in Ecoanalysis. Pupils and staff at both schools were invited to respond to photographs of possible playground scenes and indicate how design elements important to them relat…
International prototypes and local identity: The walled garden of Scotland as heritage landscape
The distinctiveness of place is a central, and often unquestioned, tenet of landscape heritage studies and the landscape design and conservation which may accompany them. In learning from history and other comparative studies, one of the many challenges is to discern what determines diversity in the landscape. At what point does the local expression of an international prototype become a local and unique landscape type, a local landscape heritage…
Urban open space in the 21st century
It Gets You Away From Everyday Life”: Local Woodlands and Community Use—What Makes a Difference
This paper explores who uses woodlands near their homes, why they visit, what benefits they believe they obtain and what makes the difference between them choosing to visit or not. In the research, supported by the Forestry Commission, a multi-method, user-led approach was used, based on focus groups, questionnaire surveys and on-site observation in relation to five different communities in the central belt of Scotland. The conclusions demonstrat…
Outdoor Environments, Activity and the Well-Being of Older People: Conceptualising Environmental Support
Although the outdoor environment provides older people with various opportunities to enhance their quality of life (QOL), few studies have investigated the extent to which this environment is influential in practice. In order to enable empirical research on this topic, in this paper we propose and examine the concept of environmental support. On the basis of a review of recent literature in gerontology, public health, environmental psychology, la…
Associations between characteristics of neighbourhood open space and older people's walking
The Childhood Factor: Adult Visits to Green Places and the Significance of Childhood Experience
This article explores the significance of childhood experience of woodlands and other green or natural places in relation to adult patterns of use and attitudes to such places. It draws on data collected in different parts of Britain. Questionnaires were used to explore the frequency of adults' visits to green places, the frequency with which they reported visiting such places as children, and their attitudes to different attributes of the places…
The 'Walking for Wellbeing in the West' randomised controlled trial of a pedometer-based walking programme in combination with physical activity consultation with 12 month follow-up: Rationale and stu…
Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN88907382
Place mapping with teenagers: Locating their territories and documenting their experience of the public realm
The purpose of this paper is to present, analyse and critique a research method, ‘place mapping’, used to document and understand teenagers' experience, use and perception of public spaces. Researchers in two case study sites, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Sacramento, CA, employed conventional street maps as a basis for eliciting and recording young people's spatial experiences. This method offers an effective mechanism for generating and structuring …
Development of the Scottish Walkability Assessment Tool (SWAT)
Associations Between Neighborhood Open Space Attributes and Quality of Life for Older People in Britain
The existing literature suggests that neighborhood open space (NOS) may play an important role for older people in maintaining and enhancing their quality of life (QoL). However, little is known as to what attributes of such places are relevant to QoL in late life. This study explored what aspects of NOS are associated with health, life satisfaction, and outdoor activity (walking) for older people. A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collec…
Towards an integrated understanding of green space in the European built environment
Emerging relationships between design and use of urban park spaces
The natural outdoors and health: Assessing the value and potential contribution of secondary public data sets in the UK to current and future knowledge
Linking landscape and health: The recurring theme
Suicide Notes Among Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos
Suicide is a significant health problem, yet many questions regarding suicide remain unanswered. One of the most frequently asked questions is related to motive: "Why did that person complete suicide?" We explored motivations for completing suicide, especially with regard to cultural differences, by analyzing suicide notes written by Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos in New Mexico. Five categories emerged describing motivation: feelings of …
More green space is linked to less stress in deprived communities: Evidence from salivary cortisol patterns
Green space has been associated with a wide range of health benefits, including stress reduction, but much pertinent evidence has relied on self-reported health indicators or experiments in artificially controlled environmental conditions. Little research has been reported using ecologically valid objective measures with participants in their everyday, residential settings. This paper describes the results of an exploratory study (n = 25) to esta…
Green Space and Stress: Evidence from Cortisol Measures in Deprived Urban Communities
Contact with green space in the environment has been associated with mental health benefits, but the mechanism underpinning this association is not clear. This study extends an earlier exploratory study showing that more green space in deprived urban neighbourhoods in Scotland is linked to lower levels of perceived stress and improved physiological stress as measured by diurnal patterns of cortisol secretion. Salivary cortisol concentrations were…
Understanding Relationships between Health, Ethnicity, Place and the Role of Urban Green Space in Deprived Urban Communities
Very little is known about how differences in use and perceptions of urban green space impact on the general health of black and minority ethnic (BME) groups. BME groups in the UK suffer from poorer health and a wide range of environmental inequalities that include poorer access to urban green space and poorer quality of green space provision. This study used a household questionnaire (n = 523) to explore the relationship between general health a…
Mitigating Stress and Supporting Health in Deprived Urban Communities: The Importance of Green Space and the Social Environment
Environment-health research has shown significant relationships between the quantity of green space in deprived urban neighbourhoods and people's stress levels. The focus of this paper is the nature of access to green space (i.e., its quantity or use) necessary before any health benefit is found. It draws on a cross-sectional survey of 406 adults in four communities of high urban deprivation in Scotland, United Kingdom. Self-reported measures of …
Effects of Urban Green Space on Environmental Health, Equity and Resilience
Modern urban life style is associated with chronic stress, insufficient physical activity and exposure to anthropogenic environmental hazards. Urban green space, such as parks, playgrounds, and residential greenery, can promote mental and physical health and reduce morbidity and mortality in urban residents by providing psychological relaxation and stress alleviation, stimulating social cohesion, supporting physical activity, and reducing exposur…
Accessibility and use of peri-urban green space for inner-city dwellers: A comparative study
The Uncommon Impact of Common Environmental Details on Walking in Older Adults
Walking is the most common form of physical activity amongst older adults. Older adults' walking behaviors have been linked to objective and perceived neighborhood and street-level environmental attributes, such as pavement quality and mixed land uses. To help identify components of walkable environments, this paper examines some of these environmental attributes and explores their influence on this population's walking behaviors. It draws on foc…
The Aging Urban Brain: Analyzing Outdoor Physical Activity Using the Emotiv Affectiv Suite in Older People
This research directly assesses older people's neural activation in response to a changing urban environment while walking, as measured by electroencephalography (EEG). The study builds on previous research that shows changes in cortical activity while moving through different urban settings. The current study extends this methodology to explore previously unstudied outcomes in older people aged 65 years or more (n = 95). Participants were recrui…
Urban Green Space and Health (29 works) · Medicine (24 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Geography (18 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Urban Transport and Accessibility (11 works) · Environmental health (10 works) · Engineering (9 works) · Gerontology (9 works)