The reliability of the Adolescent Sedentary Activity Questionnaire (ASAQ)
Introduction
Physical inactivity is a risk factor for a wide range of health problems (President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports et al., 1998) so is a topic of strong research interest. There are concerns that young people are more sedentary than previous generations (Hill et al., 2003) and the development of reliable self-report measures of sedentary behavior is important for public health research.
Small screen recreation (SSR) is the primary contributor to total time spent in sedentary behaviors among young people in developing economies (Currie, 2004), but young people also engage in many other sedentary activities (Must and Tybor, 2005). Measures which are limited to television-viewing and computer use will, therefore, underestimate the time spent being sedentary. Although some instruments measure time spent in a number of sedentary behaviors, there are no dedicated self-report questionnaires that measure time spent in a comprehensive range of sedentary behaviors among young people. This study reports the test–retest reliability of a self-report questionnaire (the Adolescent Sedentary Activities Questionnaire; ASAQ) which assesses the time spent in a comprehensive range of sedentary activities, among school-aged children, outside of school hours.
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Participants
Four primary and four high schools were selected at random from schools in Sydney (New South Wales, Australia). One class of students in Grades 6, 8 and 10 were invited to participate in the study. The questionnaire was administered on two occasions, 2 weeks apart, in each school during March/April 2004 (Autumn).
Questionnaire development
Sedentariness comprises a range of activities where energy expenditure is less than 1.5 metabolic equivalents (METs) (Ainsworth et al., 2000). As with physical activity, it is not
Discussion
Overall, the results of this study suggest that the ASAQ has good to excellent reliability and can be considered a potentially useful measure of a comprehensive range of sedentary behaviors among young people. Furthermore, there was little difference in the reliability across age groups indicating that ASAQ is not age dependent.
Reliability was generally lower for social activities, travel and, except among high school girls, on weekends. There are two reasons for lower ICCs: poor reliability of
Conclusions
ASAQ has good test–retest reliability and until better methods of assessing criterion validity are developed, it appears to be the best available tool for assessing time spent in a range of sedentary behaviors among young people outside of school hours.
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