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It has been well known that maximal oxygen uptake(VO2max) is ca-nsidered a good indicator or cardiorespiratory fitness or aerobic power. However, direct measurement of VO2max requires expensive laboratory equipments such as oxygen analyzer and carbon dioxide analyzer. The purpose of this study was threrfore to predict VO2max from a simplified questionnaire pertaining to the evaluation of cardiorespiratory endurance and to evaluate cross-validation of the developed questionnaire method in order to determine whether the questionnaire could be generalized to other samples. The questionnaire consisted of 5 Question concerning the current walking ability, long-running ability in youth, current exercise habits, responses to rush-up of stairs(imaginatory response0, and body composition. The VO2max estimated by our questionnaire was not significantly different from the criterion measured VO2max. Test-retest reliability of the questionnaire on 31 subjects was 0.92 as determined by Spearman’s correlation coefficient. The correlation between the measured and VO2max(ml/kg/min) estimated from the simplified questionnaire was 0.868(SEE=5.12ml/kg/min) in men(n=201) and 0.853(SEE=5.54ml/kg/min) in women(n=127), indicating either a relatively high relationship between the two variables. The cross-validity of the questionnaire using directly measured VO2max as the criterion was very good(r=0.874). These results suggested that the indirect assessment of cardiorespiratory fitness from questionnaire survey accurately estimates VO2max, and is safe and suitable for measuring aerobic power in epidemiologic studies of people between the ages of 30-70yr. However, the slightly less acurate VO2max prediction were observed in the highly active men and elderly.
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