Study Characteristics for Meta-Analysis on Walking and Creative Thinking

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 23 studies with 1,036 participants, primarily post-secondary students, investigating the effect of walking on creative thinking. The dataset, authored by Alex Thabane and last updated in May 2026, contains meta-analytic results showing a large effect on divergent thinking. It provides moderate certainty evidence for walking as an intervention to stimulate idea generation.

Use Cases

• Replicate meta-analytic calculations based on the reported effect sizes and confidence intervals.
• Analyze study design characteristics across randomized and non-randomized experiments mentioned in the description.
• Assess the relationship between physical activity and cognitive outcomes, specifically divergent and convergent thinking.

Strengths

• Contains results from 23 studies and 1,036 participants, providing a defined sample size.
• Reports specific effect sizes (Cohen's d) with confidence intervals for divergent (d=0.93) and convergent thinking (d=0.16).
• Uses a structured methodology including systematic search, meta-analysis, and quality assessment frameworks.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is small (17.5 KB), indicating limited scope and likely summary-level data only.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Systematic search of PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Scopus, and ProQuest databases, followed by meta-analysis.

Time Range

Studies from database inception to January 8, 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-13 17:40:31; freshness should be verified.