Understanding the impact of the built environment on physical activity levels requires reliable methods to measure potentially relevant built environment features. The Irvine Minnesota Inventory was designed to measure a wide range of built environment features that are potentially linked to active living, especially walking. The Irvine Minnesota inventory includes 160 items, which cover four domains: accessibility (62 items), pleasurability (56 items), perceived safety from traffic (31 items), and perceived safety from crime (15 items). The inventory includes both a paper version and a version in Microsoft Access, to allow data to be input into the computer directly. The items in the inventory were tested for inter-rater reliability in both southern California and the Minneapolis - St. Paul metropolitan area. Inter-rater reliability was high, with 77 percent of the items attaining 80% agreement or better in both southern California and Minnesota reliability tests.

Additional information, including the Irvine Minnesota Inventory Tool and Training Manual, is available from the UC, Irvine website.