Purpose
The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity of an interviewer-administered, 24-hour physical activity recall (PAR) compared to 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 sub-groups (gender, age and weight status).
Methods
A sample of 1347 adults (20–71yrs; 786 females) wore an SWA for a single day and then completed a PAR recalling that previous day’s physical activity. The participants each performed two trials on two randomly selected days across a 2 year time span. The EE and MVPA values for each participant were averaged across the two days. Group-level and individual-level agreement were evaluated using 95% equivalence testing and mean absolute percent error (MAPE), respectively. Results were further examined for sub-groups by gender, age and body mass index (BMI).
Results
The PAR yielded equivalent estimates of EE (compared to the SWA) for almost all demographic subgroups but none of the comparisons for MVPA were equivalent. Smaller MAPE values were observed for EE (ranges from 10.3% to 15.0%) than 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.