These data provide a template on which patterns of activity can be classified into intensity levels using the CSA accelerometer.

Sedentary behaviors are linked to adverse health outcomes, but the total amount of time spent in these behaviors in the United States has not been objectively quantified. The authors evaluated participants from the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey aged >/=6 years who wore an activity monitor for up to 7 days. Among 6,329 participants with at least one 10-hour day of monitor wear, the average monitor-wearing time was 13.9 hours/day (standard deviation, 1.9). Overall, participants spent 54.9% of their monitored time, or 7.7 hours/day, in sedentary behaviors. The most sedentary groups in the United States were older adolescents and adults aged >/=60 years, and they spent about 60% of their waking time in sedentary pursuits. Females were more sedentary than males before age 30 years, but this pattern was reversed after age 60 years. Mexican-American adults were significantly less sedentary than other US adults, and White and Black females were similarly sedentary after age 12 years. These data provide the first objective measure of the amount of time spent in sedentary behavior in the US population and indicate that Americans spend the majority of their time in behaviors that expend very little energy.

Our results support the notion that PA declines rapidly during childhood and adolescence and that accelerometers are feasible alternatives to self-report methods in moderately sized population-level surveillance studies.

No abstract

Understanding the determinants of physical activity behavior in children and youths is essential to the design and implementation of intervention studies to increase physical activity. Objective methods to assess physical activity behavior using various types of motion detectors have been recommended as an alternative to self-report for this population because they are not subject to many of the sources of error associated with children's recall required for self-report measures. This paper reviews the calibration of four different accelerometers used most frequently to assess physical activity and sedentary behavior in children. These accelerometers are the ActiGraph, Actical, Actiwatch, and the RT3 Triaxial Research Tracker. Studies are reviewed that describe the regression modeling approaches used to calibrate these devices using directly measured energy expenditure as the criterion. Point estimates of energy expenditure or count ranges corresponding to different activity intensities from several studies are presented. For a given accelerometer, the count cut points defining the boundaries for 3 and 6 METs vary substantially among the studies reviewed even though most studies include walking, running and free-living activities in the testing protocol. Alternative data processing using the raw acceleration signal is recommended as a possible alternative approach where the actual acceleration pattern is used to characterize activity behavior. Important considerations for defining best practices for accelerometer calibration in children and youths are presented.

These results indicate that a 7-d monitoring protocol provides reliable estimates of usual physical activity behavior in children and adolescents and accounts for potentially important differences in weekend versus weekday activity behavior as well as differences in activity patterns within a given day.

No abstract

The AP was more precise and more sensitive to reductions in sitting time than the AG, and thus, studies designed to assess SB should consider using the AP. When the AG monitor is used, 150 counts per minute may be the most appropriate cut point to define SB.