title: Validation of walking questionnaire for population-based prospective studies in Japan: comparison with pedometer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the reproducibility and validity of a single-item, self-administered questionnaire on walking used in two population-based prospective cohort studies in northern Japan, using pedometer counts as the reference standard.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifty-one men and 55 women participating in the main cohort studies (mean age: 61.7 years) responded to a question on the average duration of walking per day five times at 3-month intervals. The subjects also provided 3 consecutive days of pedometer counts four times along with the first four questionnaire surveys.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For the first and the fifth questionnaires administered one year apart, 55% of the subjects chose concordant categories among three options (< or = 30 min/ between 30 and 60 min/> or = 60 min), and 13% chose the highest category in one questionnaire and the lowest in the other questionnaire. The sex- and age-adjusted mean daily numbers of walking steps counted by the pedometer were 5,857, 7,047, and 7,621 for the three categories of walking duration in the fifth questionnaire, and it showed significant linear associations with all of the five questionnaire measurements.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The single-item questionnaire on walking is reasonably reproducible and valid, and useful in studying the health effects of walking among the Japanese population.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health and Forensic Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshitaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tsubono
authors.forename: Ichiro
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Tsuji
authors.forename: Kazuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fujita
authors.forename: Naoki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nakaya
authors.forename: Atsushi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hozawa
authors.forename: Takayoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ohkubo
authors.forename: Aya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kuwahara
authors.forename: Yoko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Watanabe
authors.forename: Keiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ogawa
authors.forename: Yoshikazu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nishino
authors.forename: Shigeru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hisamichi
mesh_terms: D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016138:Walking / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*