A Study On The Reliability And Validity Of Retrospective Physical Activity Questionnaire In Taizhou Population

[Background]Numerous epidemiologlcal studies indicated that physical activities have been associated with some chronic diseases, such as cancers, and cardiovascular diseases. Sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity are important risk factors of chronic diseases. However, the mechenisms are still unclear. Therefore, many studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between physical activitiy exposures and chronic diseases. Physical activity questionnaire is a most commonly used instrucment for the measurement of physical activity levels in large epidemiological investigations for containing plentiful information and its convenience. Reasonable reliability and validity is the premise of application of physical activity questionnaire. Some PAQs have been developed and assessed the reliability and validity in a few countries, such as Western countries. Physical activity questionnaires of self-designed and some PAQs from foreign countries have been started to put in use in China, recently. However, there were few studies to evaluate the reliability and validity of these PAQs.[Objective]In this study, we examined the validity and reliability of the Chinese adaptation of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short (IPAQ-S-C) and the Total Energy Expenditure Questionnaire (TEEQ-C) in Taizhou city, which lies in Jiangsu province in Southern China. This study may provide basic information for the Taizhou Longitudinal Study (TZLS) and the future studies on physical activity in China. Further, it supports valuable information on the WHO Global Strategy for Diet, Physical Activity and Health that calls for all countries to undertake monitoring of diet and physical activity.[Methods]Three hundreds participants (150men,150women,30-75years) were randomly selected from Taizhou city. On day1, after informed written consent was obtained, the participants received a physical examination by trained investigators, including measurement of height, weight, waist and hip circumferences, blood pressure and lung capacity, and then in-person interviews of IPAQ-S-C and TEEQ-C were finished by investigators.7-day physical activity logs(PA-log) initiated after the first investigations on day2. At the end of each assessment day, participants were instructed to record in their logs the amount of time and intensity they had spent in each category of physical activity. After the PA-log measurement, participants were invited to attend the second investigation on day9, when the IPAQ-S-C and TEEQ-C were readministered. The study was initiated in November2010and was completed in June2011. In our study, the analysis was restricted to205subjects, including79men and126women, who had finished two PAQs twice and PA-log as a set.To examine the test-retest reliability, the participants randomly completed the IPAQ-S-C and TEEQ-C twice during a7-d interval and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were used to evaluate the reliability. The criterion validity of the two PAQs was tested with7-day PA-log by Spearman correlation coefficients. Subgroup correlation analysis of validity was conducted by sex, age and BMI index.[Results]IPAQ-S-C and TEEQ-C have reasonable reliabilities on total physical activity domain (ICC=0.76,0.89, P<0.05) and statistical ICC correlations from two PAQs-C were noted (ICC=0.51-0.80,0.74-0.94, P<0.05). The total physical activity domain of two PAQs-C was strongly associated with that domain of PA-log (r=0.53,0.73, P <0.05). Significant correlations between two PAQs-C and PA-log were noted (r=0.28-0.59,0.32-0.72, P<0.05), except for walking domain of IPAQ-S-C (r=0.06, P>0.05). Subgroup correlation analysis of validity shows that most correlation coefficients from IPAQ-S-C and TEEQ-C were almost>0.40(P<0.05) except for walking domain and vigrous domain of female and overweight-obesity subgroup (r <0.20, P>0.05) in IPAQ-S-C and vigrous domain of female and light domain of aged people in TEEQ-C (r<0.20, P>0.05)[Conclusion]Our results indicate that the IPAQ-S-C and TEEQ-C both have good reliability for physical activity. IPAQ-S-C and TEEQ-C have acceptable criterion validity for physical activity, except for walking domain of IPAQ-S-C. In addition, IPAQ-S-C and TEEQ-C have acceptable criterion validity in subgroup, excluding walking and vigrous domain of female and overweight-obesity subgroup in IPAQ-S-C and vigrous domain of female and light domain of aged people in TEEQ-C. IPAQ-S-C can be used for cross-sectional monitoring physical activity, and TEEQ-C can assess total physical activity and it could be a useful instrument to explain the correlations between physical activity and chronic diseases.