People who feel they have sufficient time for rest score twice as high on wellbeing scales, according to the results from a new survey from London-based Hubbub, in collaboration with BBC Radio 4.

The Rest Test, billed as “the world’s largest survey into subjective experiences of rest,” spent a year investigating how different people understand and seek to rest, and whether rest can be linked to wellbeing.

Hubbub – an international collective of social scientists, artists, humanities researchers, scientists, broadcasters, public engagement professionals and mental health experts – explores the dynamics of rest, noise, tumult, activity and work, as they operate in mental health, the neurosciences and the arts.

The survey was designed by Hubbub’s researchers, led by Durham University, and incorporated several psychological scales often used in research – including The Flourishing Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale and The Scale of Positive and Negative Experience – which were used to understand the wellbeing of survey participants.

More than 18,000 people from 134 countries participated in the survey, and were able to define restful activities according to their own preferences.

“Rest is widely regarded as important to our wellbeing, but there’s so much we don’t know about it yet,” said Claudia Hammond, a presenter on BBC Radio 4 and associate director at Hubbub. “We vary a lot in how much time we have to spend resting, and even what we consider it to be. Running might feel relaxing to one person, but exhausting to another. Sometimes we want to calm our minds, while at other times, we focus on letting our bodies recover.”

Participants with the highest wellbeing scores had rested on average for between five and six hours the previous day, while the average time for rest was three hours and six minutes.

The number one activity for resting was reading, with 58 per cent of people finding it restful, followed by ‘being in the natural environment,’ which was slightly more popular with women than men.

‘Being on your own’ ranked at number three, and was most frequently chosen by women and people under 30. Researchers also noted that a significant number of the top ten restful activities are often carried out alone.

Listening to music, ‘doing nothing in particular,’ walking, having a bath or showering, daydreaming, watching television and meditating or practicing mindfulness rounded out the top ten.

Hubbub plans to release the results via a peer-reviewed publication in 2017.