Study shows Commonwealth Games were "worth it"

A study has showed that the vast majority of people living near the venues of the 2014 Glasgow Commonweath Games are supportive of the fact that Scotland's biggest city hosted the Games, and that most of those who experienced inconvenience at the time of the event thought it was worth it.

A large number of people in the study, seven out of ten respondents, were inconvenienced by the Games in one way or another, due to traffic and security arrangements and as a result of the large numbers of people in the area. Very few people, however, (7.5%) were inconvenienced by antisocial behaviour, suggesting that those attending the Games were for the most part well-behaved.

The results also show that the regeneration activity in the area, some of which was allied to the Games, is producing positive changes that are noticed by residents, including increased feelings of safety at night and reductions in problems of vacant and derelict land.

However, progress on other indicators of the attractiveness of the area is slow, and to bring the area up to national average standards on many indicators of environmental quality requires sustained regeneration efforts.

The direct impact of the Commonwealth Games, for example on participation in sport and physical activity, is positive but modest in size thus far, with 8% of the respondents in the study saying that they were doing more sport, or in a new sport as a result of being inspired by the Games.

Professor Ade Kearns, Principal Investigator on the study, said: "In general, our findings indicate that the Commonwealth Games were a positive experience for many of the people we interviewed in the East End of Glasgow. More importantly, however, the regeneration process is producing improvements, some faster and some slower than others, that offer the prospect of future gains to quality of life and health and wellbeing in the area.

"It is important that these regeneration efforts are continued, and supported by well-resourced management and maintenance efforts, as well as by social programmes that support people to become more physically active and to interact with others where social change is occurring in the communities."

The study included 414 adult respondents in the East End of Glasgow who were first interviewed as part of a larger sample of 1,015 adults in mid-2012, and then re-interviewed a few months after the Commonwealth Games between October 2014 and February 2015. Endi