Physical Activity Monitoring

Birte von Haaren-Mack, Johannes B Bussmann, Ulrich W Ebner-Priemer

Publication: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticles for encyclopediaResearch

Abstract

This entry describes the assessment of physical behavior in everyday life, an important subdomain of behavior, namely physical behavior in everyday life.. Ambulatory activity monitoring can compensate for some shortcomings of self-report methods such as recall bias, reporting bias and social desirability and is applicable to various research questions in clinical and health psychology. Due to technological developments, activity monitors based on accelerometry have become most popular as they can describe the frequency, intensity, type and time ofto assess physical activity and have contributedcontribute to advanced knowledge in epidemiological research. Besides research questions addressing a between-subject perspective, ambulatory activity monitoring enables investigating the within-subject perspective, e.g., the relationship between physical behavior and affect, motives to being active, or dose-response relationships. When. When planning and conducting accelerometer studies, technical specifications of the sensors such as battery and storage capacity, measurement principles such as wear position, the target groups´ activity characteristics, the number of measurement days and, data processing, influencing factors, and quality criteria should be taken into account. Moreover, influencing factors, reliability, validity and reactivity should be considered when planning investigations. In the future, the combination of accelerometers with electronic diaries to enable interactive multimodal ambulatory monitoring will contribute to explaining physical behavior in everyday life, as more episodes of the rare behavior of interest can be captured.
Translated title of the contributionAmbulantes Aktivitätsmonitoring
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Wiley encyclopedia of health psychology : The social bases of health behavior
EditorsKate Sweeny, Megan L Robbins
Number of pages11
Volume2
Place of Publication Hoboken, NJ:
PublisherWiley
Publication date18.12.2020
Pages447-457
ISBN (Print)9781119057833
ISBN (Electronic)9781119057840
Publication statusPublished - 18.12.2020

Citation