Impact of activity outcome and measurement instrument on estimates of youth compliance with physical activity guidelines: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: The national physical activity guidelines (PAG) in many countries recommend that youth accumulate 60 min or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) daily (PAG-MVPA). A daily target of ≥ 11,500 steps/day has been proposed as a step count alternative to this guideline (PAG-Steps). Contemporary activity monitors are capable of estimating both MVPA and steps, but it is not clear how these units compare when used to evaluate compliance with the national PAG. The purpose of this study was to compare prevalence estimates of meeting the PAG-MVPA and PAG-Steps using two commonly used monitors, the ActiGraph (AG) and SenseWear Armband (SWA). METHODS: A sample of 69 children (25 girls and 44 boys) aged 9-16 years each wore a wrist-mounted AG and a SWA over a one-week period. Days with ≥10 h of wear time for both monitors were included in the analysis. Estimates of time spent in MVPA were obtained using the Crouter equation for the AG and from proprietary algorithms for the SWA. Step counts for the AG and SWA were directly obtained from the respective software. The prevalence of meeting the PAG-MVPA and PAG-Steps was compared within each monitor, using Cohen's kappa (κ) statistic. Agreement was similarly assessed between monitors using each guideline individually. RESULTS: When assessed with the AG, the prevalence of meeting PAG was substantially higher for the PAG-MVPA (87.2 %) than for the PAG-Steps (54.2 %), with fair classification agreement (κ = 0.30) between the two guidelines. Higher prevalence rates were also observed for the PAG-MVPA (83.6 %) than for the PAG-Steps (33.8 %) when assessed using the SWA, but the prevalence rates and classification agreement (κ = 0.18) were lower than the values from the AG. Classification agreement between AG and SWA was lower for the PAG-MVPA (κ = 0.42) than for the PAG-Steps (κ = 0.55). CONCLUSIONS: The results show differential patterns of compliance with the PAG-MVPA and PAG-Steps, as assessed by the AG and SWA. Additional research is needed to directly evaluate and compare findings from public health research based on different guidelines and measurement methods

Impact of activity outcome and measurement instrument on estimates of youth compliance with physical activity guidelines: a cross-sectional study

Abstract Background The national physical activity guidelines (PAG) in many countries recommend that youth accumulate 60 min or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) daily (PAG-MVPA). A daily target of ≥ 11,500 steps/day has been proposed as a step count alternative to this guideline (PAG-Steps). Contemporary activity monitors are capable of estimating both MVPA and steps, but it is not clear how these units compare when used to evaluate compliance with the national PAG. The purpose of this study was to compare prevalence estimates of meeting the PAG-MVPA and PAG-Steps using two commonly used monitors, the ActiGraph (AG) and SenseWear Armband (SWA). Methods A sample of 69 children (25 girls and 44 boys) aged 9–16 years each wore a wrist-mounted AG and a SWA over a one-week period. Days with ≥10 h of wear time for both monitors were included in the analysis. Estimates of time spent in MVPA were obtained using the Crouter equation for the AG and from proprietary algorithms for the SWA. Step counts for the AG and SWA were directly obtained from the respective software. The prevalence of meeting the PAG-MVPA and PAG-Steps was compared within each monitor, using Cohen’s kappa (κ) statistic. Agreement was similarly assessed between monitors using each guideline individually. Results When assessed with the AG, the prevalence of meeting PAG was substantially higher for the PAG-MVPA (87.2 %) than for the PAG-Steps (54.2 %), with fair classification agreement (κ = 0.30) between the two guidelines. Higher prevalence rates were also observed for the PAG-MVPA (83.6 %) than for the PAG-Steps (33.8 %) when assessed using the SWA, but the prevalence rates and classification agreement (κ = 0.18) were lower than the values from the AG. Classification agreement between AG and SWA was lower for the PAG-MVPA (κ = 0.42) than for the PAG-Steps (κ = 0.55). Conclusions The results show differential patterns of compliance with the PAG-MVPA and PAG-Steps, as assessed by the AG and SWA. Additional research is needed to directly evaluate and compare findings from public health research based on different guidelines and measurement methods

Accelerometer and self-reported measures of sedentary behaviour and associations with adiposity in UK youth

This study used accelerometer and self-report measures of overall sedentary time (ST) and screen time behaviours to examine their respective associations with adiposity among UK youth. Participants (Year groups 5, 8, and 10; n=292, 148 girls) wore the SenseWear Armband Mini accelerometer for eight days and completed the Youth Activity Profile, an online report tool designed to estimate physical activity and ST.Stature, body mass and waist circumference were measured to classify adiposity outcomes (overweight/obese and central obesity). One-way between groups ANOVA and adjusted linear, logistic and multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted. There was a significant main effect of age on total ST across the whole week (F(2, 289)=41.64, p≤0.001). ST increased monotonically across Year 5 (581.09±107.81 min·dˉ¹), 8 (671.96±112.59 min·dˉ¹) and 10 (725.80±115.20 min·dˉ¹), and all pairwise comparisons were significant at p≤0.001. A steep age-related gradient to mobile phone use was present (p≤0.001). ST was positively associated with adiposity outcomes independent of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA; p≤0.001). Engaging in >3 hours of video gaming daily was positively associated with central obesity (OR=2.12, p≤0.05) but not after adjustment for MVPA. Results further demonstrate the importance of reducing overall ST to maintain healthy weight status among UK youth

Political conservatism predicts asymmetries in emotional scene memory

Variation in political ideology has been linked to differences in attention to and processing of emotional stimuli, with stronger responses to negative versus positive stimuli (negativity bias) the more politically conservative one is. As memory is enhanced by attention, such findings predict that memory for negative versus positive stimuli should similarly be enhanced the more conservative one is. The present study tests this prediction by having participants study 120 positive, negative, and neutral scenes in preparation for a subsequent memory test. On the memory test, the same 120 scenes were presented along with 120 new scenes and participants were to respond whether a scene was old or new. Results on the memory test showed that negative scenes were more likely to be remembered than positive scenes, though, this was true only for political conservatives. That is, a larger negativity bias was found the more conservative one was. The effect was sizeable, explaining 45% of the variance across subjects in the effect of emotion. These findings demonstrate that the relationship between political ideology and asymmetries in emotion processing extend to memory and, furthermore, suggest that exploring the extent to which subject variation in interactions among emotion, attention, and memory is predicted by conservatism may provide new insights into theories of political ideology

Understanding and Challenging Populist Negativity towards Politics: The Perspectives of British Citizens

This article adapts and develops the idea of a cynical or ‘stealth’ understanding of politics to explore how citizens’ estrangement from formal politics is processed cognitively through a populist lens. Earlier work has shown the widespread presence of stealth attitudes in the United States and Finland. We show that stealth attitudes are also well established in Britain, demonstrate their populist character and reveal that age, newspaper readership and concerns about governing practices help predict their adoption by individuals. Yet our survey findings also reveal a larger body of positive attitudes towards the practice of democracy suggesting that there is scope for challenging populist cynicism. We explore these so-called ‘sunshine’ attitudes and connect them to the reform options favoured by British citizens. If we are to challenge populist negativity towards politics, we conclude that improving the operation of representative politics is more important than offering citizens new forms of more deliberative participation

Political Trust and Job Insecurity in 18 European Polities

Several decades of trust research has confirmed that difficult national economic conditions help explain citizens’ low levels of political trust. But research points to a much less important role for personal economic factors. The latter finding, it is argued here, is a result of flawed survey questions and model misspecification. We actually know very little about the precise economic concerns that may generate low levels of trust and about the mechanisms via which they do so, resulting in a rather thin causal story. This paper seeks to address this lacuna, focusing on an issue of increasing importance in advanced economies: job insecurity. Using individual-level data from 18 European polities at two different time points, the paper finds that job insecurity generates lower levels of trust in politicians, political parties and political institutions and lower levels of satisfaction with democratic performance. Importantly, job insecurity’s effect does not diminish as one moves from specific to more diffuse objects of political trust, as previous research suggests it should. The paper also finds that the effect of job insecurity is exacerbated if citizens have negative perceptions of the performance of the wider economy. Finally, and drawing on the occupational psychology literature, the paper proposes a novel causal mechanism to link job insecurity to political trust. The intuition is that job insecurity violates a ‘psychologicaldemocratic’ trust contract between workers and the state. The mechanism is consistent with the observed results. The paper thus contributes to both the empirical and theoretical debates on the linkages between political trust and economic performance

Calibration of the Online Youth Activity Profile Assessment for School-Based Applications

A balance between the feasibility and validity of measures is an important consideration for physical activity (PA) research—particularly in school-based research with youth. The present study extends previously tested calibration methods to develop and test new equations for an online version of the youth activity profile (YAP) tool, a self-report tool designed for school applications. Data were collected across different regions and seasons to develop more robust, generalizable equations. The study involved a total of 717 youth from 33 schools (374 elementary [ages 9–11 years], 224 middle [ages 11–14 years], and 119 high school [ages 14–18 years]) in two different states in the United States. Participants wore a Sensewear monitor for a full week and then completed the online YAP at school to report PA and sedentary behaviors in school and at home. Accelerometer data were processed using an R-based segmentation program to compute PA and sedentary behavior levels. Quantile regression models were used with half of the sample to develop item-specific YAP calibration equations, and these were cross validated with the remaining half of the sample. Computed values of mean absolute percentage error ranged from 15 to 25% with slightly lower error observed for the middle school sample. The new equations had improved precision compared with the previous versions when tested on the same sample. The online version of the YAP provides an efficient and effective way to capture school level estimates of PA and sedentary behaviors in youth.This article is published as Welk, G. J., Saint-Maurice, P. F., Dixon, P. M., Hibbing, P. R., Bai, Y., McLoughlin, G. M., & Pereira da Silva, M. (2021). Calibration of the Online Youth Activity Profile Assessment for School-Based Applications. Journal for the Measurement of Physical Behaviour, 4(3), 236-246. doi:https://doi.org/10.1123/jmpb.2020-0048. © 2021 The Authors. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, which permits the copy and redistribution in any medium or format, provided it is not used for commercial purposes, no modifications are made, appropriate credit is given, and a link to the license is provided. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Calibration and Validation of the Youth Activity Profile as a Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Surveillance Tool for English Youth

Self-reported youth physical activity (PA) is typically overestimated. We aimed to calibrate and validate a self-report tool among English youth. Four-hundred-and-two participants (aged 9–16 years; 212 boys) wore SenseWear Armband Mini devices (SWA) for eight days and completed the self-report Youth Activity Profile (YAP) on the eighth day. Calibration algorithms for temporally matched segments were generated from the YAP data using quantile regression. The algorithms were applied in an independent cross-validation sample, and student- and school-level agreement were assessed. The utility of the YAP algorithms to assess compliance to PA guidelines was also examined. The school-level bias for the YAP estimates of in-school, out-of-school, and weekend moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) were 17.2 (34.4), 31.6 (14.0), and -4.9 (3.6) min week, respectively. Out-of-school sedentary behaviour (SB) was over-predicted by 109.2 (11.8) min·week−1. Predicted YAP values were within 15%–20% equivalence of the SWA estimates. The classification accuracy of the YAP MVPA estimates for compliance to 60 min·day−1 and 30 min·school-day−1 MVPA recommendations were 91%/37% and 89%/57% sensitivity/specificity, respectively. The YAP generated robust school-level estimates of MVPA and SB and has potential for surveillance to monitor compliance with PA guidelines. The accuracy of the YAP may be further improved through research with more representative UK samples to enhance the calibration process and to refine the resultant algorithm