Study On Physical Activity Assessment In Urban Shanghai

BackgroundSedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity is a global public health problem, WHO estimates that lack of physical activity leads to more than two millions death per year. With the economical development and reform, people's lifestyles in China is currently experiencing rapid change and sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity are becoming prevailing with the popularity of the laborsaving occupational posts, transportation patterns and domestic activities. The first step towards understanding and encouraging people participation in physical activity and enhanced fitness involves the provision of representative data to assess and monitor the population prevalence and distribution of physical activity participation. Questionnaires are the most practical and widely used approach to assess physical activity in a general population today. However, so far there is not any physical activity questionnaire with established reliability and validity for free-living population available in China. In addition, determining the prevalence of physical activity (and inactivity) in urban area such as Shanghai would provide important information for health promotion and management of non-communicable chronic diseases. Traditional Chinese sports items such as Tai'chi are popular in community, however, the rehabilitative effect of these mild-moderate intensity exercises on the hypertensives is unclear. Meanwhile, how to utilize the available community resources to promote leisure time physical activity in community is in great interest. The present study is designed to explore such answers to these questions mentioned above.Objectives1. To assess the reliability and validity of IPAQ (International Physical Activity Questionnaire)(long & short versions) and GPAQ(Global Physical Activity Questionnaire) in free-living community adults, which are developed to be used in population-based surveys so that countries could assess physical activity in a comparable way.2. To understand the physical activity pattern and determine the prevalence of physical activity and inactivity in Urban Shanghai with the employment of IPAQ (long version ) as the measurement instrument.3. To explore the rehabilitative effect of mild to moderate exercise training on the hypertensives in community and explore the efficient community organization in promoting community-based leisure time physical activity.Methods1. Community dwelling adults in urban Shanghai were recruited as participants for the physical activity questionnaires validity & reliability study, covering wide range of education, income and activity level. Same trained interviewers administered the questionnaires twice to the same participant with intervals of 3 days to test the test-retest reliability. Questionnaires were also validated against the Computer Science and Applications, Inc. accelerometer and pedometer, furthermore, IPAQ (long version) and GPAQ were validated against IPAQ (short version). Nested in the aforementioned validity &reliability study, focus groups and in-depth interviews were conducted to provide qualitative information on the applicability of the administration of the three physical activity questionnaires among Chinese people.2. Subjects were selected from urban Shanghai communities by using the multiphase stratified random sampling. The IPAQ (long version) was employed as the measurement instrument to assess the physical activity levels of this population. Descriptive analysis and multi-factor analysis were employed to analyze the data.3. A quasi-experimental study design experiment was applied to compare the mild to moderate exercise regimen with 70 hypertensives to a control regimen with 67 patients. Blood pressure, constitution index, medical expenses were measured and recorded in the study. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect qualitative information for the feasibility of this program.Main research findingsPart 1. Reliability and validity of physical activity questionnaires1.