Walking to occupational activities within three neighbourhoods in Basra city: a questionnaire-based study

Recognizing the demand for a reliable subjective instrument to gather information on walking to occupational activities on the neighbourhood scale, this paper outlines the Neighbourhood Walking to Occupational Activities Questionnaire (NWOAQ) recently developed at the Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde. The approach follows reliable techniques in the design of questionnaires including the analysis of currently available instruments, interviews with the potential case study participants, and the use of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). It describes the testing of NWOAQ, following a ‘mixed method’ adopted to sample the population of three case studies in Basra City, in Iraq (Al-Saymmar, Al-Mugawleen, and Al-Abassya). Cronbach’s ‘Alpha Test’ (CAT), (Cronbach, 1951) was conducted on three significant variables selected; ‘the perceived environment’ variables; the ‘constructs of the TPB’ variables; and the ‘walking outcome’ variables. This displayed different alpha levels, which were; 0.76; 0.74; and 0.87, respectively. Based on CAT, the level of internal consistency that would render a group of indicators reliable should be no less than 0.60.