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I'm wondering if there exists a validated questionnaire designed to assess the duration/intensity/type of physical activity someone has taken part in over the past 1-3 days?

I've seen many questionnaires (e.g. IPAQ, link to full questionnaire here) where the target time scale is 1 week, but I'm looking for something that captures exercise amount on a much shorter/recent time scale

Ideally it would also be short and quick to administer (for reference, I would consider both versions of the IPAQ too long)

I ask because I'm interested in people's recent levels of exercise and I've tried administering a short questionnaire where I ask things like "how many minutes of aerobic exercise did you do yesterday?" but when I looked at the the data it turns out that >70% of people report 0, so I end up with a zero-inflated variable.

This could be due to a poorly worded question, poor response format, or any number of reasons. Ideally, I would conduct a full survey design study and use factor analysis to create/validate a short form questionnaire, but at this point it might be easier to just use one that currently exists, if there is one

Does anything like this already exist?

References

  1. Craig, C. L., Marshall, A. L., Sandstrom, M., Bauman, A. E., Booth, M. L., Ainsworth, B. E., … Oja, P. (2003). International Physical Activity Questionnaire: 12-Country Reliability and Validity. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 35(8), 1381–1395. https://doi.org/10.1249/01.MSS.0000078924.61453.FB
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  • $\begingroup$ Interesting question. Could you perhaps provide an APA reference to the IPAQ, so other can more easily find the source? $\endgroup$ – Robin Kramer Jan 8 '17 at 19:30
  • $\begingroup$ Fair point. Added some additional information $\endgroup$ – Simon Jan 8 '17 at 21:49
  • $\begingroup$ Seems your could easily modify the source to include just 1-3 days? Normally I wouldn't recommend it, but it would certainly be a quick fix to your problem (and would seem to me to have minimal validity issues in this case, depending on your modifications). $\endgroup$ – mfloren May 5 '17 at 20:25
  • $\begingroup$ Also, would it not be expected that your outcome is a zero inflated variable? That would align with my view on exercise prevalence (though again, it depends on your population). $\endgroup$ – mfloren May 5 '17 at 20:27

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