Wear compliance, sedentary behaviour and activity in free-living children from hip-and wrist-mounted ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometers

ABSTRACT

The GT3X+ worn at the wrist promotes greater compliance than at the hip. Minutes in SB and PA calculated from raw accelerations at the hip and wrist provide contrasting estimates and cannot be directly compared.

Wear-time for the wrist (15.6 to 17.4 h.d⁻¹) was greater than the hip (15.2 to 16.8 h.d⁻¹) across several wear-time criteria (all P < 0.05). Moderate-strong associations were found between time spent in SB (r = 0.39), LPA (r = 0.33), MPA (r = 0.99), VPA (r = 0.82) and MVPA (r = 0.81) between the two device placements (All P < 0.001). The wrist device detected more minutes in LPA, MPA, VPA and MVPA whereas the hip detected more SB (all P = 0.001). Estimates of time in SB and all activity outcomes from the wrist and hip lacked equivalence.

One hundred and eighty-eight 9–12-year-old children wore a wrist- and hip-mounted accelerometer for 7 days. Data were available for 160 (hip) and 161 (wrist) participants. Time spent in SB and PA was calculated using GGIR.

This study examined the compliance of children wearing wrist- and hip-mounted ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometers and compared estimates of sedentary behaviour (SB) and physical activity (PA) between devices.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical activity
• ActiGraph GT3X+
• wear time
• raw acceleration

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the children, schools, teachers and parents who agreed to participate in this study. This study was funded by The University of the West of Scotland, VP Research Fund. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Authors’ Contributions

GMcL collected all of the data, performed the statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript; RA and DSB conceived, designed and coordinated the study, assisted with the statistical analysis and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript, and agree with the order of authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the University of the West of Scotland.