Office-workers maintain decreased workplace sitting time long-term following participation in a sit-stand desk intervention study

Abstract

Previous studies report decreased workplace sitting time when standing desk interventions are provided to office workers. It is unclear whether decreased sedentary behaviours are maintained long-term. This was a follow-up to a previous intervention study to investigate whether observed sitting time decreases of 30–50% were sustained 12–24 months later. A secondary aim was to compare overall physical activity between office workers with and without standing desks. Although sitting time increased over the follow-up period, this did not reach significance and reductions in workplace sitting remained significantly lower (23.5% decrease) from baseline values. There were no differences in the physical activity measures between workers with and without access to standing desks, although this was a small sample size and further research is needed. Individuals who are motivated to try standing desks at work can benefit through decreased sitting time long-term, however this may not extend to increased overall physical activity levels.

Practitioner summary: Providing standing desk options to office-based employees can have long-lasting impacts with reducing sitting time at work. Office workers who choose to stand at work do not appear to compensate with overall activity level reduction outside of work.

Abbreviations: LBP: low back pain; OSPAQ: occupational sitting and physical activity questionnaire; VAS: visual analog scale; ANOVA: analysis of variance; BMI: body mass index; ICC: intraclass correlation coefficient

Keywords:

• Ergonomics
• standing
• sit-stand desk
• low back pain
• physical activity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Sit-stand desks were provided for the original study by Varidesk, LLC. Regis University Research and Scholarship Council provided funding for ActivPAL3 monitors. Funding sources had no involvement in study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data.