Abstract
BackgroundWith the advent of workplace health and wellbeing programs designed to address prolonged occupational sitting, tools to measure behaviour change within this environment should derive from empirical evidence. In this study we measured aspects of validity and reliability for the Occupational Sitting and Physical Activity Questionnaire that asks employees to recount the percentage of work time they spend in the seated, standing, and walking postures during a typical workday.MethodsThree separate cohort samples (N = 236) were drawn from a population of government desk-based employees across several departmental agencies. These volunteers were part of a larger state-wide intervention study. Workplace sitting and physical activity behaviour was measured both subjectively against the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, and objectively against ActivPal accelerometers before the intervention began. Criterion validity and concurrent validity for each of the three posture categories were assessed using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients, and a bias comparison with 95 % limits of agreement. Test-retest reliability of the survey was reported with intraclass correlation coefficients.ResultsCriterion validity for this survey was strong for sitting and standing estimates, but weak for walking. Participants significantly overestimated the amount of walking they did at work. Concurrent validity was moderate for sitting and standing, but low for walking. Test-retest reliability of this survey proved to be questionable for our sample.ConclusionsBased on our findings we must caution occupational health and safety professionals about the use of employee self-report data to estimate workplace physical activity. While the survey produced accurate measurements for time spent sitting at work it was more difficult for employees to estimate their workplace physical activity.
Highlights
With the advent of workplace health and wellbeing programs designed to address prolonged occupational sitting, tools to measure behaviour change within this environment should derive from empirical evidence
In the third cohort of desk-based workers, reliability of the Occupational Sitting and Physical Activity Questionnaire (OSPAQ) was poor and as such a more objective measure of physical activity, such as an accelerometer, should be employed for health interventions targeting an increase in workplace physical activity and a reduction in sitting behaviour
The accelerometer inclination sensor of the ActivPAL may make this tool more sensitive when compared to the ActiGraph which when positioned on the hip does not appear to distinguish between occupational sitting time and standing time [25]
Summary
Health and wellbeing programs in the workplace are a common phenomenon in the public health arena and, increasingly, in the subject of research Evaluations of these programs are achieved through self-report surveys. As research inquiry into this area grows there has been an increase in self-report surveys that estimate sitting behaviour [5,6,7,8,9,10] This has allowed researchers to describe how much sitting and moving employees do whilst at work. The purpose of this research was to conduct further assessment of the validity and reliability of the OSPAQ for measuring sitting behaviour and workplace physical activity (standing and walking) across three separate cohorts of desk-based working adults
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