Questionnaire Design: Relation of Physical Activity and Safety

A safe neighborhood encourages residents to lead a more physically active lifestyle. Lack of physical activities elevates the risks of various health problems such as obesity and cardiovascular diseases. Various studies have discussed the effect of safety in physical activities of residents in their area. From a study reviewing previous models, it was observed that these models did not consider all the specified safety factors and their effect at the same time on physical activity. Moreover, in terms of safety in the neighborhood, the assessment factors and models of Tehran neighborhoods are neither standardized nor readily available. Therefore, this paper presents the development of a questionnaire aimed at measuring the safety factors associated with physical activeness of the residents in Tehran’s urban neighborhoods. For this purpose, a pilot study, industryrecognized validity, tests, and expert review were employed. In this way, the needed data were collected using survey questionnaires that were distributed among 90 respondents in three neighborhoods of Tehran Metropolis. Finally, the data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) by Smart Partial Least Squares (PLS) software. The questionnaire has six research constructs linked to five specified research indicators. It is available in both Farsi and English, and back translation was done by field experts to ensure its accuracy in representing the intended measurement. This questionnaire is expected to assist urban developers and managers in improving the safety condition in urban neighborhoods of Iran and consequently promoting physical activeness.