Development of the Rural Active Living Assessment Tools: measuring rural environments.
OBJECTIVE
Develop rural-specific assessment tools to be used by researchers and practitioners to measure the activity-friendliness of rural communities.


METHODS
The tools were created through a mixed-methods investigation into the determinants of physical activity among rural populations. This informed the development of a conceptual framework defining activity-friendly rural environments. Questions were generated to reflect applicable existing urban-based variables and rural conceptual model elements. Pilot testing was conducted in seven rural US communities during the fall of 2008. Inter-rater reliability was assessed.


RESULTS
The Rural Active Living Assessment (RALA) Tools include three components: Town-Wide (18 town characteristic questions, and inventory of 15 recreational amenities), Program and Policy (20 questions), and Street Segment (28 questions). We found that the Town-wide and Program and Policy tools were feasible for community members to implement. The observed agreement and kappa statistic across all items for the Street Segment Assessment were substantial (91.9% and 0.78, respectively).


CONCLUSIONS
The RALA Tools were shown to be feasible and reliability was supported. They assess features believed to be supportive of active living in rural environments, offer users a resource to assess rural environments for activity-friendliness, and may also inform the design of interventions to help rural communities become more active and healthy.
Yousefian
Anush
A
Maine Rural Health Research Center, Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, USA. ayousefian@usm.maine.edu
Hennessy
Erin
E
Umstattd
M Renee
MR
Economos
Christina D
CD
Hallam
Jeffrey S
JS
Hyatt
Raymond R
RR
Hartley
David
D
D004779:Environment Design; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D009043:Motor Activity; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000379:methods*; D011633:Public Facilities; D011998:Recreation; D012109:Research Support as Topic; D012423:Rural Health; D014186:Transportation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data