Dear Dr. Rupali Bhalerao,

it would be of interest to know more about the work you are planning.

If you want to evaluate a lifestyle intervention it would be useful to use mixed methods, i.e., patient recorded outcomes (diary, pedometer, questionnaires) as well as functional performance tests (bicycle ergometer, spirometry, etc.) even if this will be more complex or expensive.

When you will use self-report measures you have to take into account that there is a great risk of bias (as other commenters have pointed out), whereas tests of functional performance will have higher validity. To get valid data about physical activity a sports medicine performance test on a bicycle ergometer could be done before and after the intervention and at follow up, including heart rate and blood pressure, stress echocardiogram, respiratory fitness, pulmonary function, etc. It would also be interesting to use questionnaires for motivation and readiness to change.

Find attached a short reference list of reviews on physical activity questionnaires, which will provide you with hints for further research.

Kind regards and good luck for your work.

• Schembre SM, Durand CP, Blissmer BJ, Greene GW. Development and Validation of the Cognitive Behavioral Physical Activity Questionnaire. Am J Health Promot. 2014 Aug 27. [Epub ahead of print]

international physical activity questionnaire, pedometers [basic step count]

IPAQ is decent, there are plenty of other self-report and can certainly get more technical/sophisticated depending on what you need. As above, you could do multi-method, etc. If you DO go with the IPAQ though, be sure to review the lit on some of the drawbacks with it (published by the IPAQ developers). Used it in my dissertation and ran into some of the same issues inherent in it.

Thanks for suggestions. will definitely look in details of both the scores.

Thanks again.

There is also the GPAQ tool who also assess for recreational, work and travel components. Have a look at it also.

You can use "Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile II" (HPLP II). It is a valid and reliable scale that were used extensively in research. 

...accelerometer can help as well......

Yes, physical activity is so important now-a-days in the modern world, due to epidemic increase of non-communicable diseases such as obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases etc. As health and nutrition experts encourage the subjects to do more physical activities. But problem is how to measure? how to assess compliance of the practice? 

One way of assessment is the subject should be thoroughly motivated, make them for self realization of the problem/need of these practices. Another way monitoring is by using pedometers. Now-a-days pedometers are becoming popular as an everyday physical activity measurer and motivator. Generally, health professionals recommend to do 10,000 steps in a day.

The idea of pedometer is good but in research study bit difficult to implement. 

Thanks to all for good suggestions, will definitely look in to it.

All those tools are relevant and usefull but they all yhave their bias (people usually report up to  30% more PA than they really do).  Daily journals are often use to validated all thoses tools, there are less memory bias...

Dear Dr. Rupali Bhalerao,

it would be of interest to know more about the work you are planning.

If you want to evaluate a lifestyle intervention it would be useful to use mixed methods, i.e., patient recorded outcomes (diary, pedometer, questionnaires) as well as functional performance tests (bicycle ergometer, spirometry, etc.) even if this will be more complex or expensive.

When you will use self-report measures you have to take into account that there is a great risk of bias (as other commenters have pointed out), whereas tests of functional performance will have higher validity. To get valid data about physical activity a sports medicine performance test on a bicycle ergometer could be done before and after the intervention and at follow up, including heart rate and blood pressure, stress echocardiogram, respiratory fitness, pulmonary function, etc. It would also be interesting to use questionnaires for motivation and readiness to change.

Find attached a short reference list of reviews on physical activity questionnaires, which will provide you with hints for further research.

Kind regards and good luck for your work.

• Schembre SM, Durand CP, Blissmer BJ, Greene GW. Development and Validation of the Cognitive Behavioral Physical Activity Questionnaire. Am J Health Promot. 2014 Aug 27. [Epub ahead of print]

Sir as you rightly pointed it will create bias in studies and functional performance tests will be more valid. Need to look in details of these options.

Very much thankful for valid suggestions, literature provided and guidance.

As has already been identified there are significant problems with using self-report instruments alone so a mixed methods approach that combines self report using instruments such as IPAQ combined with objective measures from accelerometery is likely to provide more credible data. Recent advances with personal activity devices uploaded to cloud or other computer based databases are presently being tested in a number of studies and have the added value of potentially providing motivational support as well as gathering data. 

The Health Promotion Lifestyle Profile II (HPLP II) is a good tool for assessing such dependent variable. It is a valid and reliable tool that used extensively in scientific research, and this tool is for public use also. 

Good luck