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Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Date Submitted: Dec 6, 2017
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 7, 2017 - May 8, 2018
Date Accepted: May 8, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Association Between Self-Reported and Objective Activity Levels by Demographic Factors: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study in Children

Zink J, Belcher BR, Dzubur E, Ke W, O'Connor S, Huh J, Lopez N, Maher JP, Dunton GF

Association Between Self-Reported and Objective Activity Levels by Demographic Factors: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study in Children

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2018;6(6):e150

DOI: 10.2196/mhealth.9592

PMID: 29954723

PMCID: 6043732

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Association Between Self-Reported and Objective Activity Levels by Demographic Factors: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study in Children

  • Jennifer Zink; 
  • Britni R Belcher; 
  • Eldin Dzubur; 
  • Wangjing Ke; 
  • Sydney O'Connor; 
  • Jimi Huh; 
  • Nanette Lopez; 
  • Jaclyn P Maher; 
  • Genevieve F Dunton

Background:

To address the limitations of the retrospective self-reports of activity, such as its susceptibility to recall bias, researchers have shifted toward collecting real-time activity data on mobile devices via ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Although EMA is becoming increasingly common, it is not known how EMA self-reports of physical activity and sedentary behaviors relate to the objective measures of activity or whether there are factors that may influence the strength of association between these two measures. Understanding the relationship between EMA and accelerometry can optimize future instrument selection in studies assessing activity and health outcomes.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to examine the associations between EMA-reported sports or exercise using the accelerometer-measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and EMA-reported TV, videos, or video games with the accelerometer-measured sedentary time (ST) in children during matched 2-h windows and test potential moderators.

Methods:

Children (N=192; mean age 9.6 years; 94/192, 49.0% male; 104/192, 54.2% Hispanic; and 73/192, 38.0% overweight or obese) wore an accelerometer and completed up to 7 EMA prompts per day for 8 days during nonschool time, reporting on past 2-h sports or exercise and TV, videos, or video games. Multilevel models were used to assess the relationship between the accelerometer-measured ST and EMA-reported TV, videos, or video games. Given the zero-inflated distribution of MVPA, 2-part models were used assess the relationship between the accelerometer-measured MVPA and EMA-reported sports or exercise.

Results:

EMA-reported TV, videos, or video games were associated with a greater accelerometer-measured ST (beta=7.3, 95% CI 5.5 to 9.0, P<.001). This relationship was stronger in boys (beta=9.9, 95% CI 7.2 to 12.6, P<.001) than that in girls (beta=4.9, 95% CI 2.6 to 7.2, P≤.001). EMA-reported sports or exercise was associated with a greater accelerometer-measured MVPA (zero portion P<.001; positive portion P<.001). This relationship was stronger on weekends, in older children, and in non-Hispanic children (zero portion all P values<.001; positive portion all P values<.001).

Conclusions:

EMA reports highly relate to accelerometer measures. However, the differences in the strength of association depending on various demographic characteristics suggest that future research should use both EMA and accelerometers to measure activity to collect complementary activity data.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Zink J, Belcher BR, Dzubur E, Ke W, O'Connor S, Huh J, Lopez N, Maher JP, Dunton GF

Association Between Self-Reported and Objective Activity Levels by Demographic Factors: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study in Children

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2018;6(6):e150

DOI: 10.2196/mhealth.9592

PMID: 29954723

PMCID: 6043732

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.