title: Measurement of adults' sedentary time in population-based studies.
abstract: Sedentary time (too much sitting) increasingly is being recognized as a distinct health risk behavior. This paper reviews the reliability and validity of self-reported and device-based sedentary time measures and provides recommendations for their use in population-based studies. The focus is on instruments that have been used in free-living, population-based research in adults. Data from the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey are utilized to compare the descriptive epidemiology of sedentary time that arises from the use of different sedentary time measures. A key recommendation from this review is that, wherever possible, population-based monitoring of sedentary time should incorporate both self-reported measures (to capture important domain- and behavior-specific sedentary time information) and device-based measures (to measure both total sedentary time and patterns of sedentary time accumulation).
authors.affiliation: School of Population Health, Cancer Prevention Research Centre, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. g.healy@uq.edu.au
authors.forename: Genevieve N
authors.initials: GN
authors.lastname: Healy
authors.forename: Bronwyn K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: Elisabeth A H
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Winkler
authors.forename: Paul A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Gardiner
authors.forename: Wendy J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Charles E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Matthews
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D009749:Nutrition Surveys; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012306:Risk; D057185:Sedentary Behavior; D013997:Time Factors