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Reliability and validity of the early years physical activity questionnaire (EY-PAQ)

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posted on 2016-06-27, 13:03 authored by Daniel D. Bingham, Paul J. Collings, Stacy ClemesStacy Clemes, Silvia CostaSilvia Costa, Gillian Santorelli, Paula GriffithsPaula Griffiths, Sally E. Barber
Measuring physical activity (PA) and sedentary time (ST) in young children (<5 years) is complex. Objective measures have high validity but require specialist expertise, are expensive, and can be burdensome for participants. A proxy-report instrument for young children that accurately measures PA and ST is needed. The aim of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the Early Years Physical Activity Questionnaire (EY-PAQ). In a setting where English and Urdu are the predominant languages spoken by parents of young children, a sample of 196 parents and their young children (mean age 3.2 ± 0.8 years) from Bradford, UK took part in the study. A total of 156 (79.6%) questionnaires were completed in English and 40 (20.4%) were completed in transliterated Urdu. A total of 109 parents took part in the reliability aspect of the study, which involved completion of the EY-PAQ on two occasions (7.2 days apart; standard deviation (SD) = 1.1). All 196 participants took part in the validity aspect which involved comparison of EY-PAQ scores against accelerometry. Validty anaylsis used all data and data falling with specific MVPA and ST boundaries. Reliability was assessed using intra-class correlations (ICC) and validity by Bland–Altman plots and rank correlation coefficients. The test re-test reliability of the EY-PAQ was moderate for ST (ICC = 0.47) and fair for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA)(ICC = 0.35). The EY-PAQ had poor agreement with accelerometer-determined ST (mean difference = −87.5 min·day−1) and good agreement for MVPA (mean difference = 7.1 min·day−1) limits of agreement were wide for all variables. The rank correlation coefficient was non-significant for ST (rho = 0.19) and significant for MVPA (rho = 0.30). The EY-PAQ has comparable validity and reliability to other PA self-report tools and is a promising population-based measure of young children’s habitual MVPA but not ST. In situations when objective methods are not possible for measurement of young children’s MVPA, the EY-PAQ may be a suitable alternative but only if boundaries are applied.

Funding

The involvement of D.D.B., P.J.C., and S.E.B in this publication was through their affiliation with the Healthy Children Healthy Families theme of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) Yorkshire and Humber. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Health Service, NIHR or Department of Health. The involvement of S.C. in this publication was under the auspices of the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence which is funded by the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health Research, and the Wellcome Trust.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Sports

Volume

4

Issue

30

Citation

BINGHAM, D.D. ... et al, 2016. Reliability and validity of the early years physical activity questionnaire (EY-PAQ). Sports, 4 (2), article 30.

Publisher

MDPI / © The Authors

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-05-11

Publication date

2016

Notes

This is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

ISSN

2075-4663

Language

  • en