Abstract
ABSTRACTRural Australians have a higher likelihood of chronic disease than urban Australians, particularly male farmers. Chronic disease has been associated with occupational sedentary time. The aim was to validate the self-report of sedentary time in men in contrasting rural occupations. Farmers (n = 29) and office workers (n = 28), age 30–65 years, were recruited from the Riverland region of South Australia. Daily sedentary time and number of breaks in sedentary time were self-reported and measured objectively using body-worn inclinometers. Correlational analyses were conducted between self-reported and objectively measured variables, separately by occupation. There was a significant correlation between self-reported and objectively measured sedentary time in the whole sample (r = 0.44, P = 0.001). The correlation among office workers was significant (r = 0.57, P = 0.003) but not among farmers (r = 0.08, P = 0.68). There were no significant correlations between self-reported and measured number of breaks in sedentary time, for the whole sample (rho = −0.03, P = 0.83), office workers (rho = 0.17, P = 0.39) and farmers (rho = −0.22, P = 0.25). In conclusion, the validity of self-report of sedentary behaviours by farmers was poor. Further research is needed to develop better performing self-report instruments or more accessible objective measures of sedentary behaviour in this population.
Highlights
There is accumulating evidence for the detrimental health effects of prolonged and uninterrupted sitting, including type 2 diabetes and biomarkers of cardio-metabolic diseases (Healy et al, 2008)
Both self-reported and objectively measured sedentary time were significantly lower in farmers; farmers spent 44% of their total work time being sedentary compared with 67% for office workers
While self-reporting of sedentary behaviour is an appealing strategy due to low cost and very low respondent burden, the results of this study suggest it is of w limited utility in rural Australians
Summary
There is accumulating evidence for the detrimental health effects of prolonged and uninterrupted sitting, including type 2 diabetes and biomarkers of cardio-metabolic diseases (Healy et al, 2008). Research attention has focused on the workplace as a setting within which daily sitting behaviours are largely determined (Carnethon et al., 2009), motivated by prospective evidence of associations between occupational. State and national surveys in Australia consistently report poorer overall health among rural compared with urban adults (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2010). To help narrow this health disparity, patterns of occupational sitting ee among rural adults warrant attention as a basis for designing and evaluating practices and initiatives that are tailored to different workplace settings. Self-reported sitting is usually assessed with ev simple questionnaires, either self- or interviewer-administered, while objective measurement is achieved using inclinometers or inferred from established w thresholds in accelerometry data
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