With regard to practical activities that take place outdoors using the entrepreneur’s facilities, we recommend first using the mood survey. It is simple to answer and the web version can be used directly on a mobile phone(see example here).
It is more difficult to measure heart rate variability, especially if you want to obtain results from multiple people together. However, it is possible for individual visitors to take measurements themselves using an exercise/activity monitor to assess their own experience of how nature impacts stress and recovery.
When you are physically active and moving in nature, it is not possible to use HRV to simultaneously measure mental stress and recovery. The physical activity will completely dominate the impact on HRV. It is therefore a good idea to include a period of physical rest and at the same time assess mood. A good approach is to measure HRV continuously and also measure mood 1/ when the visitor arrives at the entrepreneur, 2/ during the actual stay in nature and 3/ after the visit and before going home. On all these occasions it is good to be in physical rest.
If you need to process the collected HRV data, you need the help of researchers or specialist companies.
/Text: Lisbeth Slunga-Järvholm
Om du vill få tillförlitliga resultat på gruppnivå så är det bra att planera och genomföra hälsomätningar tillsammans med forskare inom området.
Om du vill få tillgång till insamlade hälsodata från kunder/besökare, så måste du beakta den lagstiftning som finns, deltagarnas rätt till integritet och se till att få deras godkännande.
Lisbeth Slunga Järvholm, Professor, senior consultant (attending) physician at Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University
lisbeth.slunga-jarvholm@umu.se