Rio 2016: an assessment of the impacts of the Olympic Games on health and physical activity of women living in a low socio-economic status community

In 2016, the XXXI Summer Olympic Games took place in Rio de Janeiro. In line with the bidding procedure and the hope for an Olympic legacy, the Brazilian government and the Rio de Janeiro City Council made commitments to deliver lasting improvements to the city’s residents. These improvements relate to infrastructure like transport and facilities, but also residents’ health and well-being. Such health benefits, in particular those concerning physical activity (PA), were promised to be delivered through national and regional policies and interventions. According to official documents, changes would begin to be implemented in the years preceding the Games and one of the legacy promises was to use the event to stimulate people to engage in LTPA/sport. The main purpose of this thesis was therefore to assess the impact of the 2016 Olympic Games on LTPA/sport participation of the local population. Specifically, the investigation focused on women living in Cidade de Deus, a low socio economic status (SES) community located closely to the Olympic park. A mixed-methods design using document analyses, interviews, observations and a questionnaire were used to produce data. The results of the investigation provided insights into sport policies delivered for this low income community, the physical environment for the practice of LTPA and sport available in Cidade de Deus, the PA patterns of women from this community and how public health discourses concerning health and PA have a significant impact in shaping the health and PA discourses of these women

Some common errors of experimental design, interpretation and inference in agreement studies

We signal and discuss common methodological errors in agreement studies and the use of kappa indices, as found in publications in the medical and behavioural sciences. Our analysis is based on a proposed statistical model that is in line with the typical models employed in metrology and measurement theory. A first cluster of errors is related to nonrandom sampling, which results in a potentially substantial bias in the estimated agreement. Second, when class prevalences are strongly nonuniform, the use of the kappa index becomes precarious, as its large partial derivatives result in typically large standard errors of the estimates. In addition, the index reflects rather one-sidedly in such cases the consistency of the most prevalent class, or the class prevalences themselves. A final cluster of errors concerns interpretation pitfalls, which may lead to incorrect conclusions based on agreement studies. These interpretation issues are clarified on the basis of the proposed statistical modelling. The signalled errors are illustrated from actual studies published in prestigious journals. The analysis results in a number of guidelines and recommendations for agreement studies, including the recommendation to use alternatives to the kappa index in certain situations