Relating Built Environment to Physical Activity: Two Failures to Validate

The Irvine-Minnesota Inventory (IMI) is an audit tool used to record properties of built environments. It was designed to explore the relationships between environmental features and physical activity. As published, the IMI does not provide scoring to support this use. Two papers have since been published recommending methods to form scales from IMI items. This study examined these scoring procedures in new settings. IMI data were collected in two urban settings in Alberta in 2008. Scale scores were calculated using the methods presented in previous papers and used to test whether the relationships between IMI scales and walking behaviors were consistent with previously reported results. The scales from previous work did not show expected relationships with walking behavior. The scale construction techniques from previous work were repeated but scales formed in this way showed little similarity to previous scales. The IMI has great potential to contribute to understanding relationships between built environment and physical activity. However, constructing reliable and valid scales from IMI items will require further research.