The project, financed by the FFG, examines how Youths can be encouraged to lead a more active lifestyle using mobile terminal devices. An interdisciplinary project team consisting of traffic planners (komobile), town and country planners (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences) and sport scientists will execute the project.

Via an entry examination in the first stage of the project the physical activity behavior, with a focus on mobility patterns, of Youths from two geographically different associate schools (one from an urban and one from a suburban area) will be investigated and analyzed. The results will be discussed with scientists and youths in a subsequent workshop.

In a second stage possibilities of how mobile terminal devices (e.g. Smartphones) can be used to encourage an increase physical activity will be compiled in collaboration with the participating youths. Using the open approach of “Living Labs” the youths will be enabled to develop their own solutions with the support of the project team.

In the final stage an examination will be conducted to determine in how far the newly developed proceedings for terminal devices have influenced the physical activity and mobility behaviors of youths in urban areas and which factors have an inhibiting or enhancing effect on the youths’ mobility.

Building on the results the toolkit “Jugend Aktiv Mobilcheck” (JAM) will be developed to bundle the made experiences and to demonstrate possibilities of how to best analyze physical activity and mobility patterns and which opportunities for interventions exist. End product will be a manual for schools, (youth-) organizations, municipalities and cities.

Project team on behalf of the Centre for Sport Science and University Sports (Dept. “Bildung, Education and Sports Culture”):
Ass.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Rosa Diketmüller
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Michael Kolb
Mag. Franz Mairinger
DI Irene Bittner

Project duration: 01.10.2014-31.03.2017

Project homepage: aktive-jugend.boku.ac.at