Criterion-related validity of the last 7-day, short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire in Swedish adults

Abstract

Objective: To examine the validity of the short, last 7-day, self-administered form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). Design: All subjects wore an accelerometer for seven consecutive days and completed the IPAQ questionnaire on the eighth day. Criterion validity was assessed by linear regression analysis and by modified Bland -Altman analysis. Specificity and sensitivity were calculated for classifying respondents according to the physical activity guidelines of the American College of Sports Medicine/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Setting: Workplaces in Uppsala, Sweden. Subjects: One hundred and eighty-five (87 males) participants, aged 20 to 69 years. Results: Total self-reported physical activity (PA) (MET-min day 21 ) was significantly correlated with average intensity of activity (counts min 21 ) from accelerometry (r ¼ 0.34, P , 0.001). Gender, age, education and body mass index did not affect this relationship. Further, subcomponents of self-reported PA (time spent sitting, time in PA, time in moderate and vigorous activity (MVPA)) were significantly correlated with objectively measured PA (P , 0.05). Self-reported time in PA was significantly different from time measured by accelerometry (mean difference: 2 25.9 min day 21 ; 95% limits of agreement: 2 172 to 120 min day 21 ; P , 0.001). IPAQ identified 77% (specificity) of those who met the current PA guidelines of accumulating more than 30 min day 21 in MVPA as determined by accelerometry, whereas only 45% (sensitivity) of those not meeting the guidelines were classified correctly. Conclusions: Our results indicate that the short, last 7-days version of the IPAQ has acceptable criterion validity for use in Swedish adults. However, the IPAQ instrument significantly overestimated self-reported time spent in PA. The specificity to correctly classify people achieving current PA guidelines was acceptable, whereas the sensitivity was low.

Validity of the international physical activity questionnaire short form (IPAQ-SF): A systematic review

“…Of the seventeen studies using an accelerometer as the objective standard (8 in Table 2[18-20,29,31-33,39], 4 in Table 3[38,40,42,43], and 5 in both [23,25,34-36]), four types of units were commonly reported (with some studies reporting multiple different units). These included (i) raw accelerometry counts without transformation (Counts [17,25,29,31,33,35,36,40,43]), (ii) count data to energy expenditure (TEE/AEE/PAL [23,34,39]), (iii) MET scores (MET min/wk [19,25,31,32,36,38,40,42]), and (iv) time spent (Total PA min/wk [25,31,36,38-40,42,43]). In addition to the variability of units used for reporting accelerometer data, there was also a great variability in the cutoffs used to transform the accelerometer data into MET min/wk.…”

“…Of the sixteen studies that computed the total physical activity from the IPAQ-SF (Table 2), six [25,29,30,32,33,37] used total time spent (Total PA min/wk), nine [17-20,31,34-36,39] transformed the total time spent to MET scores (MET min/wk), and one [23] used a novel trichotomized variable indicating the adequacy of physical activity (3 categories). Again, no pattern across the correlations was evident based on the use of these different indices.…”

Sociodemographic factors associated with physical activity in Mexican adults

“…Despite the fact that there is a question to evaluate sitting time in the IPAQ short version, it is believed that this version possesses a low sensitivity for estimating this information (32) . In other middle-income countries, the prevalence of inactivity has been reported as 41?1 % (11) , whereas in highincome countries this is .60 % (22) .…”

Position statement: Testing physical condition in a population – how good are the methods?

“…Validation against accelerometer show relatively low correlation coefficients (Craig CL et al, 2003;Ekelund U et al, 2006).…”