Reliability and Validity of Common Subjective Instruments in Assessing Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour in Chinese College Students

Hui Gao; Xingxing Li; Yunhua Zi; Xuanwen Mu; Mingjian Fu; Tingting Mo; Kuai Yu

doi:10.3390/ijerph19148379

Reliability and Validity of Common Subjective Instruments in Assessing Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour in Chinese College Students

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 8;19(14):8379. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19148379.

Authors

Hui Gao¹, Xingxing Li¹, Yunhua Zi¹, Xuanwen Mu¹, Mingjian Fu¹, Tingting Mo¹, Kuai Yu¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, Key Laboratory of Environment and Health, Ministry of Education and State Key Laboratory of Environmental Health (Incubating), School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.

Abstract

The reliability and validity of common physical activity (PA) questionnaires are not well investigated in college students. This study aims to evaluate the reliability and validity of common subjective instruments in measuring PA and sedentary behaviour (SB) among college students. A total of 142 college students were included through convenience sampling. Each participant was asked to wear Actigraph wGT3X-BT accelerometers and fill physical activity logs (PAL) for 7 consecutive days. The Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ), the International Physical Activity Questionnaire long-form (IPAQ-LF), and short-form (IPAQ-SF) were interviewed by face-to-face at both day 0 and day 8. Reliability was evaluated by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), while the validity was evaluated by Spearman correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman statistics. The instruments showed moderate reliability in reporting total PA (ICC = 0.50-0.62) and SB (ICC = 0.47-0.52), while moderate validity in reporting moderate and vigorous PA (MVPA) (r = 0.37-0.42), but fair to poor validity in reporting SB (r = 0.09-0.28). Bland-Altman plots showed that all the instruments would underestimate MVPA and overestimate SB. Thus, in Chinese younger adults, the GPAQ, IPAQ-LF, IPAQ-SF, and PAL provide limited but acceptable reliability and validity in measuring MVPA and SB, among which GPAQ might be the most valid instrument.

Keywords: accelerometer; physical activity; reliability; sedentary behaviour; validity.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
China
Exercise*
Humans
Reproducibility of Results
Sedentary Behavior*
Students
Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant number 82003422 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities grant number 2019kfyXJJS035.