Objective assessment of urban built environment related to physical activity--development, reliability and validity of the China Urban Built Environment Scan Tool (CUBEST).
BACKGROUND
Some aspects of the neighborhood built environment may influence residents' physical activity, which in turn, affects their health. This study aimed to develop an urban built environment evaluation tool and conduct necessary reliability and validity tests.


METHODS
A 41-item urban built environment scan tool was developed to objectively assess the neighborhood built environment features related to physical activity. Six neighborhoods in Hangzhou were selected from three types of administrative planning units. A pair of auditors independently assessed all of the 205 street segments at the same time. Half of the segments (n = 104) were audited twice by the same auditor after a two-week time interval. Inter-rater reliability was assessed by comparing the audits of paired observers, while intra-rater reliability was evaluated by comparing an auditor's repeated assessments of the same segments. The construct validity was tested using factor analysis.


RESULTS
The inter-rater reliability for most items was above 0.8. The intra-rater reliability for most items was above 0.4, and was lower than corresponding inter-rater reliability. Six factors were extracted by factor analysis and the factor loading matrix showed good construct validity.


CONCLUSIONS
The CUBEST is a reliable and valid instrument that can be used to assess the physical activity-related built environment in Hangzhou, and potentially other cities in China.
Meng
M
Su
Yu-Kun
YK
Du
Qing-Min
QM
Liu
Yan-Jun
YJ
Ren
Ichiro
I
Kawachi
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, 38 XueYuan Road, HaiDian District, Beijing 100191, China. lvjun@bjmu.edu.cn.
Jun
J
Lv
Li-Ming
LM
Li
D002681:China; D004779:Environment Design / Q000592:standards*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D009043:Motor Activity; D015588:Observer Variation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results