International Physical Activity Questionnaire, Short Form (IPAQ-SF)
In plain English
International Physical Activity Questionnaire, Short Form (IPAQ-SF) is a multi-item scale (7 items). What it claims to measure: Self-reported physical activity behaviour over the last 7 days across walking, moderate and vigorous intensity domains plus sitting time, summarised as total MET-minutes per week and as low/moderate/high activity categories. Licence for an employer or vendor: open licence (verified 2026-07-12).
The published evidence is moderate for convergent and discriminant validity, criterion validity against a reference standard and test-retest reliability; weak for responsiveness to change and measurement invariance. No published evidence was located for criterion validity against organisational outcomes (absence, turnover, performance): the registry searched and found none in the sweep to date, so if you need that property evidenced, this instrument does not yet carry it. 2 of the 5 graded properties rest on evidence from clinical, student or otherwise non-working samples; where the property is sensitive to population that evidence cannot carry a High grade, and the reason is stated on each cell below. 2 of the 5 graded properties rest on adult general-population samples rather than samples of working adults; the flag says so on each cell.
Grades summarise the published evidence for this instrument on its own terms; they are not comparable across instruments, and this page makes no recommendation. Whether an instrument fits your workforce is a judgement this registry informs but cannot make. Full evidence, with citations, below. This summary is generated from the record's data, not written by hand.
Identity
Version: IPAQ short form, self-administered and telephone-administered variants, with 'last 7 days' and 'usual week' reference periods (unchanged since the 2000 consensus instruments described by Craig et al. 2003)
Structure: 7 items (walking, moderate activity, vigorous activity each as frequency in days and duration per day, plus sitting time), scored as MET-minutes per week and categorical low/moderate/high activity
Original citation: Craig CL, Marshall AL, Sjostrom M, et al. International physical activity questionnaire: 12-country reliability and validity. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2003. doi:10.1249/01.MSS.0000078924.61453.FB
Steward / publisher: The IPAQ Group (originating International Consensus Group), current distribution via the IPAQ website at sites.google.com/view/ipaq, maintained on a voluntary basis
Licence status (verified 2026-07-12): Free and open access, no permissions required to use, distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) per the steward's current website. The steward home page states the questionnaire is publicly available, open access, and requires no permissions to use; the FAQ specifies it is available under CC BY 4.0 (with attribution) and that users are free to translate or modify it without asking permission first. Verified by reading the steward page bodies at the last verification attempt (home page and FAQ), not from founding papers or reviews.
Constructs claimed
Self-reported physical activity behaviour over the last 7 days across walking, moderate and vigorous intensity domains plus sitting time, summarised as total MET-minutes per week and as low/moderate/high activity categories. It is a behaviour-frequency and energy-expenditure estimator, not a latent wellbeing construct.
Evidence
Structural validity Not applicable (category difference)untestedevidence form: canonical
absence type: category-error the property does not apply to this construct
Not applicable: structural validity presumes a reflective scale with a latent structure to test; a formative behaviour index has none. IPAQ-SF is a formative behaviour index (three activity domains plus sitting), not a reflective scale with a single latent trait, so a conventional factor-analytic structure is only weakly applicable and is rarely tested; the developers themselves framed it as a set of activity-domain items summed to MET-minutes rather than a unidimensional scale (Craig 2003). The systematic review by Lee et al. found the validation literature focused overwhelmingly on criterion and construct validity against objective measures rather than on latent structure (Lee 2011). Where dimensionality has been examined it is typically handled as separate activity domains rather than a common factor, and no consistent confirmatory factor model for a single physical-activity trait has been established.
Convergent and discriminant validity Moderatewell-establishedevidence form: canonical
indirect adolescent boys, adults and COPD patients; no working-adult or general-population sample (flag basis: adolescent boys; Chilean adults; COPD patients)
Construct/convergent validity against objective monitors is modest and consistent with a self-report activity measure. Correlations between IPAQ-SF total activity and accelerometer-derived activity typically cluster around Spearman rho 0.30; Lee et al. reported correlations ranging from 0.09 to 0.39 across 23 validation studies, with none reaching a minimal acceptable standard (Lee 2011). In adolescent boys IPAQ-SF MVPA correlated 0.31 with accelerometer MVPA (Raask 2017). In Chilean adults concurrent validity against ActiGraph was likewise weak to moderate (Balboa-Castillo 2023), and in COPD patients construct validity against accelerometry was weak with wide limits of agreement (Flora 2023). A consistent secondary finding is systematic over-reporting of activity relative to devices.
Criterion validity: reference standard Moderatewell-establishedevidence form: canonical
indirect adults and college students; no working-adult or general-population sample (flag basis: Australian adults; college students)
Against objective device-based reference measures (accelerometry, and in the founding work the CSA/MTI accelerometer) IPAQ-SF shows weak-to-moderate criterion validity with a well-documented overestimation bias. The 12-country developer study reported a median criterion validity of about rho 0.30 against accelerometry (Craig 2003). The Lee et al. systematic review found correlations of 0.09 to 0.39 against objective standards including accelerometry, doubly labelled water and fitness measures, with IPAQ-SF generally overestimating physical activity, sometimes markedly (Lee 2011). A quantitative bias analysis using ActiGraph as the criterion in 235 Australian adults derived substantial attenuation factors, confirming large measurement error relative to the device standard (Mahmood 2019). Sedentary/sitting-time validity against devices is also weak in EU meta-analysis (Meh 2021) and in college students (Gao 2022). No true diagnostic gold standard exists for the construct; accelerometry and doubly labelled water are the accepted criterion measures and IPAQ-SF is at best moderately valid against them.
Criterion validity: organisational Absent (searched; none found in the sweep to date)untestedevidence form: canonical
absence type: population-general searched; none found in the sweep to date
No located study validates IPAQ-SF against organisational or work outcomes (sickness absence, turnover, job performance, or diagnosed conditions in a work context). Workplace-adjacent studies use IPAQ-SF only as an outcome measure of behaviour change within workplace physical-activity interventions, for example the Walk@WorkSpain office programme, which used the IPAQ short form to detect changes in activity-related energy expenditure but did not relate scores to absence, productivity or turnover (Puig-Ribera 2017). Its responsiveness to intervention has been examined in a men-only weight-management programme, again against device measures rather than organisational endpoints (Donnachie 2020). Criterion validity against work outcomes is therefore Absent in the retrieved literature.
Internal consistency Not applicable (category difference)untestedevidence form: canonical
absence type: category-error the property does not apply to this construct
Internal consistency (Cronbach alpha) is only marginally meaningful for IPAQ-SF because the items are a formative set of distinct activity domains summed to an index rather than reflective indicators of one latent trait, so alpha is rarely and inconsistently reported and is not the appropriate reliability statistic. The validation literature summarised by Lee et al. concentrates on criterion validity and test-retest reproducibility rather than internal consistency (Lee 2011), and the founding study reported repeatability (test-retest) rather than an internal-consistency coefficient (Craig 2003).
Test-retest reliability Moderatewell-establishedevidence form: canonical
general international general population adults and general adult sample; also COPD patients and college students (flag basis: adults, international general population; general adult (Chile; COPD patients, Portugal; college students, China)
| Coefficient | Type | Interval | Sample | Population | Evidence form |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spearman rho clustered around 0.8 (pooled across IPAQ short and long forms) | r | within the same week | multi-centre, 14 centres across 12 countries | adults, international general population | canonical |
| ICC reported for continuous IPAQ-SF variables with limits of agreement, SEM and MDC (test-retest over one week) | ICC | 7 days | 62 | COPD patients, Portugal | canonical |
| ICC for test-retest reliability over one week | ICC | 7 days | 161 | Chilean adults aged 35 to 65 | canonical |
| ICC reported for IPAQ-SF measured on day 0 and day 8 (moderate reliability) | ICC | 8 days | 142 | college students, China | canonical |
Test-retest repeatability is one of IPAQ-SF's better-evidenced properties. The founding 12-country study reported same-week repeatability with Spearman rho clustered around 0.8, comparable for short and long forms (Craig 2003). Subsequent structured retest studies over roughly one week report ICCs in clinical (COPD, Flora 2023), general adult (Chile, Balboa-Castillo 2023) and student (China, Gao 2022) samples, generally in a moderate range. Care is needed to separate true test-retest ICCs from concurrent validity coefficients, which are lower. No working-adult test-retest estimate was located.
Measurement invariance Very lowuntestedevidence form: canonical
general the instrument is fielded on general populations; the cited studies describe no further sample
Formal measurement-invariance testing (configural, metric, scalar) of IPAQ-SF is essentially absent. The founding study collected reliability and validity data across 14 centres in 12 countries and judged the instrument suitable for cross-national comparison, but this was a comparability argument from correlations rather than a formal invariance analysis (Craig 2003). Cross-cultural studies that administer IPAQ-SF in multiple countries, such as a mainland China, Taiwan and Malaysia sample, use it as a covariate and do not test invariance of its measurement model (Liu 2022). No configural/metric/scalar invariance evidence across sex, age, occupation or language was located.
Responsiveness and MIC Lowthinevidence form: canonical
direct office workers; also men-only weight-management programme participants and COPD patients (flag basis: office workers; men-only weight-management programme; COPD patients)
Responsiveness evidence is thin and a formal minimal important change has not been established. One study examined IPAQ-SF responsiveness within a 12-week men-only weight-management programme (Football Fans in Training), finding significant pre-post change but standardised response means and change scores that did not correlate well with device-measured change (Donnachie 2020). The Walk@WorkSpain intervention in office workers detected self-reported increases in activity-related energy expenditure with the IPAQ short form (Puig-Ribera 2017). Retest studies have derived minimal detectable change values from ICC and SEM in COPD patients (Flora 2023), but no anchor-based minimal important change for a general or working population has been established.
Populations, languages and norms
IPAQ-SF is one of the most widely used physical-activity questionnaires internationally, designed explicitly for cross-national surveillance and available in many validated language versions; the founding work spanned 12 countries (Craig 2003) and later validations cover, among others, Chilean Spanish (Balboa-Castillo 2023), Portuguese in COPD (Flora 2023), Estonian adolescents (Raask 2017), Chinese college students (Gao 2022) and multiple EU-language sitting-time versions (Meh 2021). Standardised scoring to MET-minutes and low/moderate/high categories provides comparability, but there are no dedicated working-adult norms and category cut-points can misclassify because of the overestimation bias.
Criticisms and controversies
The dominant criticism is systematic overestimation of physical activity relative to objective measures, with criterion correlations against accelerometry typically only around rho 0.30 and ranging as low as 0.09; the Lee et al. systematic review concluded the evidence did not support IPAQ-SF as a valid absolute measure and cautioned against its use where accurate quantification is needed (Lee 2011). Quantitative bias analysis has shown the resulting measurement error substantially attenuates associations with health outcomes such as colorectal cancer, requiring large correction factors (Mahmood 2019). Sitting-time and sedentary-behaviour items validate poorly against devices (Meh 2021). Because IPAQ-SF is a formative index rather than a reflective scale, several standard psychometric properties (unidimensional structure, internal consistency) are conceptual mismatches. For workplace wellbeing use specifically, it measures a health behaviour rather than wellbeing, has no validation against organisational outcomes, and lacks working-adult norms.
References (11)
- Craig CL, Marshall AL, Sjostrom M, et al. (2003). International physical activity questionnaire: 12-country reliability and validity https://doi.org/10.1249/01.MSS.0000078924.61453.FB
- Lee PH, Macfarlane DJ, Lam TH, Stewart SM (2011). Validity of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ-SF): a systematic review https://doi.org/10.1186/1479-5868-8-115
- Raask T, Maestu J, Latt E, et al. (2017). Comparison of IPAQ-SF and two other physical activity questionnaires with accelerometer in adolescent boys https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169527
- Mahmood S, Nguyen NH, Bassett JK, et al. (2019). A quantitative bias analysis to estimate measurement error-related attenuation of the association between self-reported physical activity and colorectal cancer risk https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyz209
- Meh K, Jurak G, Soric M, Rocha P, Sember V (2021). Validity and reliability of IPAQ-SF and GPAQ for assessing sedentary behaviour in adults in the European Union: a systematic review and meta-analysis https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18094602
- Gao H, Li X, Zi Y, et al. (2022). Reliability and validity of common subjective instruments in assessing physical activity and sedentary behaviour among college students https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19148379
- Flora S, Marques A, Hipolito N, et al. (2023). Test-retest reliability, agreement and construct validity of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire short-form in patients with COPD https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rmed.2022.107087
- Balboa-Castillo T, Munoz S, Seron P, et al. (2023). Validity and reliability of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form in Chilean adults https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291604
- Donnachie C, Hunt K, Mutrie N, et al. (2020). Responsiveness of device-based and self-report measures of physical activity to detect behaviour change in a weight-management programme https://doi.org/10.1123/jmpb.2019-0018
- Puig-Ribera A, Bort-Roig J, Gine-Garriga M, et al. (2017). Can a workplace sit less move more programme help Spanish office employees achieve physical activity recommendations? https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckx104
- Liu W, Chen JS, Gan WY, et al. (2022). Associations of problematic internet use, weight-related self-stigma, and nomophobia with physical activity https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912135
Record notes
Overall confidence: IPAQ-SF is a heavily studied self-report physical-activity behaviour measure with well-established but only weak-to-moderate criterion validity against accelerometry (typically rho ~0.30, range 0.09 to 0.39) and a well-documented overestimation bias, and reasonable same-week test-retest repeatability. It is not a wellbeing instrument; for the OWHS purpose it is a workplace-adjacent behaviour measure. Two absences are important and honestly recorded: criterion validity against organisational/work outcomes is untested (Absent), and formal measurement invariance is untested (Very low). Internal consistency and single-factor structural validity are largely category mismatches for a formative index and are marked Not-applicable / Very low accordingly rather than treated as ordinary evidence gaps. Nearly all evidence is population-indirect for working adults (general population, adolescents, students, clinical groups; no occupational norms located), so most grades carry an indirect flag. Licence verified 2026-07-12 against the steward's current website (open access, no permissions required, CC BY 4.0), not a founding paper. What v0.2 still made hard: the formative-index nature of IPAQ-SF means several reflective-scale fields (structural validity, internal consistency) are awkward to grade; The maintainers used Not-applicable and Very low with explicit notes rather than forcing a misleading grade.