Construct validity of physical activity and sedentary behaviors staging measures for adolescents.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the construct validity of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviors (SB) staging measures for adolescents that incorporate the current national recommendations.


METHODS
The Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run, Actigraph accelerometer, and self-reported hours of TV viewing served as criterion measures. Participants were 878 adolescents (M age = 12.74, 53.6% girls, 39.9% non-White).


RESULTS
The PA staging measure had mixed evidence of convergent validity and strong evidence of divergent validity. The SB staging measure had strong and generalized evidence of convergent validity but weak evidence of divergent validity, which could be related to inaccurate assumptions about the relation of SB to PA and fitness. Results were generally in the expected direction and provide preliminary evidence for the construct validity and generalizability of both staging measures. However, more research is warranted to validate the staging measures with Actigraph-measured PA and sedentary time. Effect sizes (eta(2) values) ranged from small to large (.02-.63).


CONCLUSIONS
PA and SB stage-of-change measures that are congruent with current national recommendations and appropriate for use among adolescents were partially supported for their construct validity.
Hagler
Athena S
AS
San Diego State University/University of California San Diego, Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, USA. ahagler@paceproject.org
Calfas
Karen J
KJ
Norman
Gregory J
GJ
Sallis
James F
JF
Patrick
Kevin
K
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000145:classification*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018670:Monitoring, Ambulatory / Q000592:standards; D009043:Motor Activity; D012015:Reference Standards; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data