Validity of 24-h physical activity recall: physical activity measurement survey

Abstract

Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity of an interviewer-administered, 24-h physical activity recall (PAR) compared with that of the SenseWear Armband (SWA) for estimation of energy expenditure (EE) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in a representative sample of adults. A secondary goal was to compare measurement errors for various demographic subgroups (gender, age, and weight status).

Methods: A sample of 1347 adults (20-71 yr, 786 females) wore an SWA for a single day and then completed a PAR, recalling the previous day's physical activity. The participants each performed two trials on two randomly selected days across a 2-yr time span. The EE and MVPA values for each participant were averaged across the 2 d. Group-level and individual-level agreement were evaluated using 95% equivalence testing and mean absolute percent error, respectively. Results were further examined for subgroups by gender, age, and body mass index.

Results: The PAR yielded equivalent estimates of EE (compared with those in the SWA) for almost all demographic subgroups, but none of the comparisons for MVPA were equivalent. Smaller mean absolute percent error values were observed for EE (ranges from 10.3% to 15.0%) than those for MVPA (ranges from 68.6% to 269.5%) across all comparisons. The PAR yielded underestimates of MVPA for younger, less obese people but overestimates for older, more obese people.

Conclusions: For EE measurement, the PAR demonstrated good agreement relative to the SWA. However, the use of PAR may result in biased estimates of MVPA both at the group and individual level in adults.

Figure 1

Results from 95% equivalence testing for agreement between 24-h physical activity recall (PAR) and SenseWear Armband (SWA) for energy expenditure (left) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (right).

Figure 2

Bland-Altman plots with 95% limits of agreement between 24-h physical activity recall (PAR) and SenseWear Armband (SWA) for energy expenditure (left) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (right).

Figure 3

Heat maps from 3 way ANOVA test – gender × age × body mass index (BMI) – for energy expenditure (top) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (bottom). White indicates values from SenseWear Armband (SWA) and 24-hour physical activity recall (PAR) are the same on average; Blue indicates values from PAR are smaller than SWA; Red indicates values from PAR larger than SWA.