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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Urban Science
Volume 10 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2024.1426705

Arabic Translation, Cultural Adaptation, and Pretesting of Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale for Adults-Abbreviated (NEWS-A): Arabic NEWS-A

Provisionally accepted
Hazzaa M. Al-Hazzaa Hazzaa M. Al-Hazzaa 1*Mezna A. Almarzooqi Mezna A. Almarzooqi 2Reem F. Alsukait Reem F. Alsukait 3Reem AlAhmed Reem AlAhmed 4Severin Rakic Severin Rakic 5Volkan Cetinkaya Volkan Cetinkaya 5Kelly R. Evenson Kelly R. Evenson 6Saleh Alqahtani Saleh Alqahtani 4
  • 1 Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 2 Leaders Development Institute, Ministry of Sport, Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 3 Independent researcher, Middle East and North Africa, Saudi Arabia
  • 4 King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 5 World Bank Group, Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States
  • 6 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale-Abbreviated (NEWS-A) is an essential tool for assessing neighborhood walkability among adults. Currently, no Arabic version is available for this important walkability scale. This study translated the NEWS-A to Arabic, culturally adapted, and pre-tested it for adults in Saudi Arabia. The NEWS-A was translated and culturally adapted using Cross-cultural Survey Guidelines and then pre-tested using a sample of households selected randomly from the neighborhoods of three districts in Riyadh. The findings showed that translating, adapting, and pre-testing the NEWS-A resulted in retaining all the original items and adding three additional items. The Arabic NEWS-A provides an important tool for future research on neighborhood environment walkability among adults. The manuscript topic appears quite relevant to the journal of Frontiers in Built Environment (section of urban health), as the Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale is considered an important tool when studying urban neighborhood walkability and health. Publishing the findings of the translation, adaptation, and pre-testing of the NEWS in this journal will enable researchers in the entire Arabic countries to utilize this essential walkability scale for future urban walkability research .

    Keywords: Hazzaa M Al-Hazzaa: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, investigation, methodology, resources, supervision, Writing -original draft

    Received: 02 May 2024; Accepted: 02 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Al-Hazzaa, Almarzooqi, Alsukait, AlAhmed, Rakic, Cetinkaya, Evenson and Alqahtani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hazzaa M. Al-Hazzaa, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.