Research Article Measuring Workplace Travel Behaviour: Validity and Reliability of Survey Questions

Copyright © 2013 Nicholas A. Petrunoff et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. The purpose of this study was to assess the (previously untested) reliability and validity of survey questions commonly used to assess travel mode and travel time.Methods. Sixty-five respondents from a staff survey of travel behaviour conducted in a south-western Sydney hospital agreed to complete a travel diary for a week, wear an accelerometer over the same period, and twice complete an online travel survey an average of 21 days apart.The agreement in travel modes between the self-reported online survey and travel diary was examined with the kappa statistic. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used to examine agreement of travel time from home to workplace measured between the self-reported online survey and four-day travel diary. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) time of active and nonactive travellers was compared by t-test. Results. There was substantial agreement between travel modes