Measures
DISEASE
Online surveys were completed at baseline, midpoint, and post-intervention, with specific measures detailed below. Each measure was collected at all time points unless specified. As indicators of intervention implementation, participants indicated whether they completed intervention activities and how much they liked them at midpoint and post-intervention. The intervention group reported whether they signed up for the hiking challenge, completed challenge hikes, and if applicable: who they hiked with, how difficult hikes were, how enjoyable hikes were, whether they completed the challenge, and whether they planned to continue hiking. There was also an open-ended question inviting participants to share any other details that they would like to share about their experiences with the winter hiking challenge. The control group completed similar questions about the provided activity sheets and also reported on whether they had heard of and engaged in the Western New York Winter Hiking Challenge at post-intervention, as an indicator of potential contamination between study groups.Primary outcome: Frequencies of activities of interest during the past month. An adapted version of the Pleasant Activities List [Outcome variables from this measure included the primary outcome of how often participants hiked/went on nature walks, as well as how often participants engaged in activities expected to be lower vs. higher risk for COVID-19 and how often participants engaged in social and physical activities. Following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we operationalized lower-risk activities as activities completed outdoors as well as those completed indoors with members of one’s household or alone, summing across the frequencies of each applicable activity to arrive at a total low-risk activity frequency score. Higher-risk activities were those completed indoors with individuals who do not live in one’s household, with sum scores calculated for these. Frequencies of physical and social activities were also created by summing the frequencies of all items in each of these categories, with categorization adapted from prior research [Secondary outcomes: Stress and sleep duration during the past month. The 10-item, validated Perceived Stress Scale [Demographics. Participants completed demographic survey questions about themselves (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, sex, education level) and their household (e.g., number of adults and children in the household, income) at baseline.COVID-19 experiences. Participants completed questions about whether anyone close to them tested positive for COVID-19 in the past month and ways the COVID-19 pandemic impacted them over the past month (e.g., changes to employment, financial challenges) [