A cluster randomized controlled trial to reduce office workers’ sitting time: effect on productivity outcomes

The association between sedentary behaviour and indicators of stress: A systematic review

“…Four studies were longitudinal [33,[49][50][51] (n=271 to 11,676), two were controlled clinical trials [52,53] (n=43-231), two were pilot interventions [54,55] (n=12 to 20) and two were direct observation studies (i.e. where time in sedentary behaviour was collected for one year or one month and averaged) [33,56] (n=79 to 140).…”

“…The majority of these studies were conducted in Australia Objective measures of stress were used in n=7 studies, and included salivary [37,52,54,55] or hair [44,47,48] cortisol, blood pressure (systolic and diastolic) [52] and heart rate [52]. Stress was selfreported using measures including the Life Events Inventory (LEI, n=3) [33], the Cohen Perceived Stress Scale (PSS, n=8) [35, 38-40, 43, 48-50], the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21, n=1) [41], the Perceived Stress Questionnaire for Young Women (PSQYW, n=1) [51], the affective experience component of the Princeton Affect and Time Survey (n=1) [36], the Daily Stress Inventory (DSI, n=1) [56], the Chronic Burden Scale (CBS, n=1) [45], the Traumatic Stress Schedule (TSS, n=1) [45], job stressors (n=1) [42], the Health and work Questionnaire (n=1) [53] and the Effort Reward Imbalance Scale (ERIS, n=1) [46]. One study measured stress using self-report survey items designed specifically for that study [34].…”

“…Ten studies measured sedentary behaviour objectively (n=7 utilised accelerometers [37,45,48,49,52,53,56]; n=2 directly observed participants' sitting time in a laboratory setting [54,55]; n=1 objectively measured TV viewing time via time-lapse video recordings [33]). Self-report measures of sedentary behaviour were used in 16 studies.…”

“…One moderate-quality study (9%) [37] showed 'mixed' (i.e. positive and null) findings and eight studies (66%) (n=1 strong- [50]; n=7 moderate- [41,43,44,47,48,52,53] found predominately no association between sedentary behaviour and stress. Based on the best-evidence synthesis, there was insufficient evidence for an overall relationship between time spent in sedentary behaviour and stress.…”

“…Two weak-quality studies which examined self-reported stress [36] and salivary cortisol [55] respectively, found inverse associations between time spent in sedentary behaviour and stress, whereby increased time in sedentary behaviour was associated with lower levels of stress. Eight remaining studies (n=6 moderate- [43,44,47,48,52,53]; n=2 weak-quality [33,40]) found no association between sedentary behaviour and stress. Stress was self-reported in four of those studies [33,40,43,53]; three used objective measures of stress (hair cortisol [44,47]; systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and salivary cortisol [52]); whilst one study used both a self-report and objective (hair cortisol) measure [48].…”