Development, scoring, and reliability for the Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes for Safe Routes to School (MAPS-SRTS) instrument

Autor: Leigh Ann Ganzar, Katie Burford, Deborah Salvo, Chad Spoon, James F. Sallis, Deanna M. Hoelscher
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: BMC Public Health, Vol 24, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1471-2458
DOI: 10.1186/s12889-024-18202-9
Popis: Abstract Background Active commuting to school can be a meaningful contributor to overall physical activity in children. To inform better micro-level urban design near schools that can support active commuting to school, there is a need for measures that capture these elements. This paper describes the adaptation of an observational instrument for use in assessing micro-scale environments around urban elementary schools in the United States. Methods The Micro-scale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes for Safe Routes to School (MAPS-SRTS) was developed from existing audit instruments not designed for school travel environments and modifications for the MAPS-SRTS instrument include the structure of the audit tool sections, the content, the observation route, and addition of new subscales. Subscales were analyzed for inter-rater reliability in a sample of 36 schools in Austin, TX. To assess reliability for each subscale, one-way random effects single-measure intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were used. Results Compared to the 30 original subscales, the adapted MAPS-SRTS included 26 (86.6%) subscales with revised scoring algorithms. Most MAPS-SRTS subscales had acceptable inter-rater reliability, with an ICC of 0.97 for the revised audit tool. Conclusions The MAPS-SRTS audit tool is a reliable instrument for measuring the school travel environment for research and evaluation purposes, such as assessing human-scale determinants of active commuting to school behavior and documenting built environment changes from infrastructure interventions.
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