Research Study Abstract

Reliability and Convergent Validity of the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey Physical Activity Items

  • Published on 05/2002

Purpose The purpose of this study was to assess the reliability and convergent validity of the NCHRBS physical activity items.

Methods Forty-five college students (25 females, 20 males) completed the physical activity items twice during the same day, with approximately 2 hours between administrations. In addition, 20 college students (9 females, age: 24.1 ± 3.5 y, BMI: 27.9 ± 6.4; 11 males, age: 24.0 ± 3.2 y, SMI: 26.4 ± 3.9) wore a Computer Science and Applications Inc. Actigraph Monitor (CSA), wore a Dig walker pedometer (DVV7OI), and recorded their daily physical activity in a diary for 7 days At the end of the 7 days, subjects completed the NCHRBS physical activity items.

Results The test-retest intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) ranged from 0.97-0.99 for the four items. The VPA item was highly correlated with VPA recorded in the activity diary (r = 0.82) and number of days with 20 mins of VPA from the GSA (r = 0.60). The MPA item was moderately correlated with diary MPA (r = 0.66), number of days with 30 mins of MPA from the CSA (r = 0.61), and number of steps (r = 0.49) The FLEX item (r = 0.57) was moderately correlated and the MSE item (r = 0.88) was highly correlated with corresponding activities in the diary.

Conclusion The NCHRBS physical activity items have excellent test-retest reliability and validity indices similar to other self-report physical activity questions.

Journal

Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise


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