Physical Activity Environment
MEASURES REGISTRY USER GUIDE
SECTION
9
Next Steps in Physical Activity Environment Assessment
The field of physical activity environment measurement has three areas needing continued development: (1) creating new instruments to fill gaps; (2) improving evidence about existing measures; (3) supporting both researchers and practitioners to expand use of physical activity environment measures; and (4) continued efforts to promote use of common measures where possible.
Though several validated measures are available to choose from in most settings, some clear gaps remain. The bigger need identified by an expert working group148 is for validated measures that are short enough to be feasible for use by practitioners. Interventions to improve physical activity environments are recommended by international6,149 and national authoritative organizations,2,7 and measures should be used to determine intervention needs and evaluate outcomes. Few brief, validated measures are available, but examples include MAPS-Mini for streetscapes, PARA for parks, and PANES for perceived neighborhood walkability.73,85,91
Some measures in the Measures Registry, particularly audit measures, have evidence of reliability, but evidence is still needed on whether the constructs are consistently associated with physical activity (i.e., construct validity). For measures with evidence of validity in one population subgroup, it would be useful to expand evidence by studying other age groups, income groups, and specific race and ethnicity subgroups to evaluate generalizability of effects. An important consideration is whether measures are sensitive to change, but very few have been evaluated for this ability. An important improvement for GIS measures is to document the procedures used to create variables, so the variables become more comparable. Some guides help with standardization of procedure,67,128 but they depend on comparable, accurate, recent data being available. Thus, improvement in the quality and availability of physical activity-relevant data in GIS is a high priority. This will require collaboration with diverse government agencies such as transportation, city planning, and taxation, though crowd-sourcing of data is a possibility.
Continuing barriers to the use of physical activity environment measures are the burden and cost of data collection, complexity of data management, lack of clarity in scoring and interpreting results, and need for adapting measures. The Built Environment Assessment Training (BEAT) Think Tank has recommended several strategies for advancing the use environmental measures.148
- Develop simplified but validated measures to encourage more use by researchers and practitioners.
- Develop technological tools to simplify data collection, data management, scoring, and analysis.
- Improve scoring systems, with freely available syntax or software.
- Create guidelines for adaptation of existing measures and online access to various versions.
- Provide online training for data collection, data management, and interpretation of results.
- Encourage professional organizations to support the use of validated environmental measures and help the field develop consensus about definitions of constructs, preferred methods, and scoring.
- Incorporate training in environmental assessment in university courses in multiple departments.
- Use social media to support use and interpretation of environmental measures.