TY - JOUR T1 - Physical activity research: time to scale up! JF - British Journal of Sports Medicine JO - Br J Sports Med DO - 10.1136/bjsports-2022-106361 SP - bjsports-2022-106361 AU - Jennifer N Baldwin AU - Marina B Pinheiro AU - Leanne Hassett AU - Juliana S Oliveira AU - Heidi Gilchrist AU - Adrian E Bauman AU - Andrew Milat AU - Anne Tiedemann AU - Catherine Sherrington Y1 - 2023/05/17 UR - http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2023/05/16/bjsports-2022-106361.abstract N2 - Despite massive growth in the volume of physical activity research in the past 15 years,1 we are yet to see an improvement in global physical activity levels.2 So how do we enact real, measurable and sustainable change in population physical activity levels? If the goal of the WHO Global Action Plan on Physical Activity of a 15% relative reduction in physical inactivity by 2030 is to be met,3 then a shift in research focus and implementation strategy is needed. In this editorial, we argue for better reporting and more ‘scale-up’ of physical activity programmes and outline how this can be done.Intervention studies, whether they be preliminary/pilot, efficacy/effectiveness, replication or dissemination studies, are critical to informing policy decisions.4 Despite the importance of intervention research, observational studies continue to dominate physical activity research.1 Though the proportion of intervention studies has increased slightly over time, replication and dissemination studies (defined in box 1) have actually decreased.1 As a community of physical activity researchers, it is time we asked ourselves: are we studying what is easily carried out—or what is fundable—rather than what really matters for population health?Box 1 Differentiating efficacy and effectiveness, replication and dissemination studies1Efficacy and effectiveness studies investigate the impact of an intervention under optimal conditions (controlled (efficacy) or community (effectiveness) … ER -