New Information on Population Activity Patterns Revealed by Objective Monitoring

Abstract

Objective monitors allow a variety of new and established physical activity variables to be evaluated. Time-stamped devices that can measure movement intensity with high resolution permit the determination and assessment of a myriad of movement measurements. Whereas traditional self-report metrics are limited by the burdens of recall and response, new objective measures allow for multiple indices of intensity, duration, frequency, amount, pattern and sequence of movement activities to be calculated and used in epidemiological analyses. These new metrics enable an examination of all movement behaviours (physical activity, sedentary behaviours and sleep), together with their interactions and their combined relationships with health indicators. Although monitors can still be enhanced, and more research is required, the new generation of metrics already provides opportunity to advance the understanding of movement behavior epidemiology significantly and to validate previous work carried out with less robust or complete measures.