Comparison of the EPIC Physical Activity Questionnaire with Combined Heart Rate and Movement Sensing in a Nationally Representative Sample of Older British Adults

Objectives: To compare physical activity (PA) subcomponents from EPIC Physical Activity Questionnaire (EPAQ2) and combined heart rate and movement sensing in older adults. Methods: Participants aged 60–64y from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development in Great Britain completed EPAQ2, which assesses self-report PA in 4 domains (leisure time, occupation, transportation and domestic life) during the past year and wore a combined sensor for 5 consecutive days. Estimates of PA energy expenditure (PAEE), sedentary behaviour, light (LPA) and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) were obtained from EPAQ2 and combined sensing and compared. Complete data were available in 1689 participants (52% women). Results: EPAQ2 estimates of PAEE and MVPA were higher than objective estimates and sedentary time and LPA estimates were lower [bias (95% limits of agreement) in men and women were 32.3 (261.5 to 122.6) and 29.0 (239.2 to 94.6) kJ/kg/ day for PAEE; 24.6 (210.6 to 1.3) and 26.0 (210.9 to 21.0) h/day for sedentary time; 2171.8 (2454.5 to 110.8) and 260.4 (2367.5 to 246.6) min/day for LPA; 91.1 (2159.5 to 341.8) and 55.4 (2117.2 to 228.0) min/day for MVPA]. There were significant positive correlations between all self-reported and objectively assessed PA subcomponents (rho = 0.12 to 0.36); the strongest were observed for MVPA (rho = 0.30 men; rho = 0.36 women) and PAEE (rho = 0.26 men; rho = 0.25 women). Conclusion: EPAQ2 produces higher estimates of PAEE and MVPA and lower estimates of sedentary and LPA than objective assessment. However, both methodologies rank individuals similarly, suggesting that EPAQ2 may be used in etiological studies in this population. Citation: España-Romero V, Golubic R, Martin KR, Hardy R, Ekelund U, et al. (2014) Comparison of the EPIC Physical Activity Questionnaire with Combined Heart Rate and Movement Sensing in a Nationally Representative Sample of Older British Adults. PLoS ONE 9(2): e87085. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0087085 Editor: Amir A. Zadpoor, Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), Netherlands Received July 2, 2013; Accepted December 19, 2013; Published February 6, 2014 Copyright: 2014 España-Romero et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by the MRC grant numbers U1200632239, U123092720 and U106179473. Rajna Golubic is financially supported by a scholarship from the Gates Cambridge Trust, Benefactors’ Scholarship from St. John’s College Cambridge and Raymond and Beverly Sackler Studentship from the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: vanesa.espana@mrc.epid-cam.ac. uk " Membership of the NSHD scientific and data collection teams is provided in the Acknowledgments.