Transcultural adaptation and psychometric properties of Spanish version of Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire: the PregnActive project

Abstract

Objective: To transculturally adapt the Spanish version of Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire (PPAQ) analyzing its psychometric properties.

Methods: The PPAQ was transculturally adapted into Spanish. Test-retest reliability was evaluated in a subsample of 109 pregnant women. The validity was evaluated in a sample of 208 pregnant women who answered the questionnaire and wore the multi-sensor monitor for 7 valid days. The reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient), concordance (concordance correlation coefficient), correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient), agreement (Bland-Altman plots) and relative activity levels (Jonckheere-Terpstra test) between both administrations and methods were examined.

Results: Intraclass correlation coefficients between both administrations were good for all categories except transportation. A low but significant correlation was found for total activity (light and above) whereas no correlation was found for other intensities between both methods. Relative activity levels analysis showed a significant linear trend for increased total activity between both methods.

Conclusions: Spanish version of PPAQ is a brief and easily interpretable questionnaire with good reliability and ability to rank individuals, and poor validity compared with multi-sensor monitor. The use of PPAQ provides information of pregnancy-specific activities in order to establish physical activity levels of pregnant women and adapt health promotion interventions.

Keywords: Ejercicio; Embarazo; Encuestas y cuestionarios; Estilo de vida; Exercise; Health; Life style; Pregnancy; Salud; Surveys and questionnaires.