title: Assessing Daily Physical Activity in Older Adults: Unraveling the Complexity of Monitors, Measures, and Methods.
abstract: At the 67th Gerontological Society of America Annual Meeting, a preconference workshop was convened to discuss the challenges of accurately assessing physical activity in older populations. The advent of wearable technology (eg, accelerometers) to monitor physical activity has created unprecedented opportunities to observe, quantify, and define physical activity in the real-world setting. These devices enable researchers to better understand the associations of physical activity with aging, and subsequent health outcomes. However, a consensus on proper methodological use of these devices in older populations has not been established. To date, much of the validation research regarding device type, placement, and data interpretation has been performed in younger, healthier populations, and translation of these methods to older populations remains problematic. A better understanding of these devices, their measurement properties, and the data generated is imperative to furthering our understanding of daily physical activity, its effects on the aging process, and vice versa. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the highlights of the preconference workshop, including properties of the different types of accelerometers, the methodological challenges of employing accelerometers in older study populations, a brief summary of ongoing aging-related research projects that utilize different types of accelerometers, and recommendations for future research directions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland. jschrac1@jhu.edu.
authors.forename: Jennifer A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Schrack
authors.affiliation: MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL, London, UK.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cooper
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Medicine, CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Annemarie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Koster
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Epidemiology and Population Sciences, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Eric J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Shiroma
authors.affiliation: Section of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine and National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Joanne M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Murabito
authors.affiliation: Department of Health and Exercise Science, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
authors.forename: W Jack
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Rejeski
authors.affiliation: Longitudinal Studies Section, Translational Gerontology Branch, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ferrucci
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Epidemiology and Population Sciences, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
authors.forename: Tamara B
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Harris
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D004734:Energy Metabolism; D015444:Exercise; D005853:Geriatrics; D006801:Humans; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Exercise; Functional performance; Physical activity; Physical function; Physical performance