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Background The use of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to measure sedentary behavior (SB) in children, adolescents, and adults can increase the understanding of the role of the context of SB in health outcomes. Objective The aim of this study was to systematically review literature to describe EMA methodology used in studies on SB in youth and adults, verify how many studies adhere to the Methods aspect of the Checklist for Reporting EMA Studies (CREMAS), and detail measures used to assess SB and this associated context. Methods A systematic literature review was conducted in the PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and SPORTDiscus databases, covering the entire period of existence of the databases until January 2018. Results This review presented information about the characteristics and methodology used in 21 articles that utilized EMA to measure SB in youth and adults. There were more studies conducted among youth compared with adults, and studies of youth included more waves and more participants (n=696) than studies with adults (n=97). Most studies (85.7%) adhered to the Methods aspect of the CREMAS. The main criteria used to measure SB in EMA were self-report (81%) with only 19% measuring SB using objective methods (eg, accelerometer). The main equipment to collect objective SB was the ActiGraph, and the cutoff point to define SB was <100 counts/min. Studies most commonly used a 15-min window to compare EMA and accelerometer data. Conclusions The majority of studies in this review met minimum CREMAS criteria for studies conducted with EMA. Most studies measured SB with EMA self-report (n=17; 81.0%), and a few studies also used objective methods (n=4; 19%). The standardization of the 15-min window criteria to compare EMA and accelerometer data would lead to a comparison between these and new studies. New studies using EMA with mobile phones should be conducted as they can be considered an attractive method for capturing information about the specific context of SB activities of young people and adults in real time or very close to it.

New technologies able to identify the sedentary behavior (SB), such as the Mobile Ecological Momentary Assessment (mEMA) still need to be investigated. The aim of this study was to describe SB in the physical, social, and environmental contexts and verify the agreement between the mEMA and accelerometry in the identification of SB in young adults. During 7 days, 123 young adults used concomitant mEMA and Actigraph wGT3xBT accelerometer. Data of 2262 mEMA prompts and respective count values in each minute (5 min previous to prompt) were included in the analyses. Descriptive and comparative statistics were used in analyses using the SPSS 20.0 software. The physical context (PC) at home was the highest occurrence of SB (46.3%) and the main activity was “watching TV/movies” (29.7%). The main social context (SC) related to SB was “staying alone” (49.6%). The main assertions related to the participants’ environmental context (EC) were: “I appreciate the comfort of electronic devices when I am at home” (86.2%). mEMA identified the presence of SB in 78.1% of prompts, while accelerometry identified 70.9% (PABAK = 0.42). High values for the presence of SB were observed (sensitivity = 84%) and lower in the absence of SB (specificity = 38%). The study demonstrates the viability of mEMA use to obtain information about the occurrence of SB in contextual factors and good sensitivity to identify the presence of SB in young adults. The combined use of these methods is suggested in future studies about SB in young adults.

ObjectiveThe aim of the present study was to analyze the tracking of indicators of health‐related physical fitness between childhood and adulthood.MethodsThe study presents a longitudinal design, with the first phase of data collection occurring annually between 2002 and 2006, and the second phase carried out in 2016. A total of 142 young adults, aged between 21 and 25 years, of both sexes participated in the study. Were evaluated body mass, stature, skinfold thickness, sit and reach test; abdominal resistance/strength test, and 20‐m shuttle run test.ResultsThe intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) indicated that all health‐related physical fitness variables presented values considered moderate to high tracking (0.37‐0.67; P < 0.005) between the analyzed periods. It was verified that in all variables, tracking was higher in the female group, except for the result of the running test related to the cardiorespiratory fitness component which demonstrated greater tracking in the male group (ICC = 0.37 vs ICC = 0.50). The result of the running test for males was the only variable presenting a discrepancy in the values observed between baseline and follow‐up (P < 0.05; k = 0.110).ConclusionsIt was concluded that the indicators of body fat, abdominal and running tests demonstrated moderate tracking, while the sit and reach test presented high tracking.