Reliability and validity of the international physical activity questionnaire for adults in Syria

ABSTRACT

The International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) is a validated method for physical activity (PA) assessment used in many countries. This study compared two methods IPAQ-SF-SY and ActiGraph WGT3X-BT (AG) accelerometer in measuring PA and sedentary behavior (SB) in free-living conditions. A total of 52 working participants simultaneously wore the AG accelerometer for 7 days. Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), and Bland-Altman plots were used to evaluate reliability and validity of short-form Syrian version of questionnaire (IPAQ-SF-SY). In general, poor to moderate correlation was observed between answers of the IPAQ-SF-SY-1 and those of the IPAQ-SF-SY 2, with Spearman’s correlation coefficients ranging from 0.20 to 0.88 (p < 0.05). Among the tested group, the ICC ranged from 0.27 to 0.90 in women and from 0.37 to 0.94 in men. Regarding validity, we found a low positive correlation between PA measured by AG accelerometer and that obtained by the IPAQ-SF-SY. Correlations were highest for MVPA (r = 0.25), and lowest for vigorous activity (r = 0.01). The limits of agreement for estimated MVPA calculated by IPAQ-SF-SY versus the AG accelerometer, with upper and lower 95% LOA of −119.2 to 298.2 min/day. The IPAQ-SF-SY appears to overestimate the levels of physical activity, but underestimated sitting time, suggesting that the tool has problems in measuring the levels of PA in Syrian adults.

KEYWORDS:

• International physical activity questionnaire
• Physical activity
• reliability
• Syria
• validity

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express their deep appreciation to the Director General of AECS.

Disclosure statement

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