Seven-Day Physical Activity Recall Questionnaire

Description of Measure

The Seven-Day Physical Activity Recall Questionnaire is a self-report recall instrument to assess physical activity. The instrument was designed for use in a community health survey on prevention of heart disease. Respondents are asked about the number of hours spent in sleep, moderate, hard, and very hard activities during the preceding week. Examples of the types of activities in each category are provided, and the week is separated into weekend days and weekdays. The remaining amount of time is presumed to have been spent in light activities. A formula is available for the calculation of daily energy expenditure in kilocalories, and norms are available from the Stanford Heart Disease Prevention Program. Test-retest reliability over a two week interval has been found to be good, and validity testing of the instrument versus a one-week physical activity log shows a trend for under-reporting of both hours and events in recall. However, estimates of mean daily energy expenditure were not significantly different using the two methods.

References

Abstracts/Links to selected articles

• Blair SN, Haskell WL, Ho P, Paffenbarger RS Jr, Vranizan KM, Farquhar JW, Wood PD. Assessment of habitual physical activity by a seven-day recall in a community survey and controlled experiments. Am J Epidemiol 1985; 122:794-804.

  Assessment of habitual physical activity in epidemiologic and health education studies has been difficult. A seven-day physical activity recall interview was developed and administered in a community health survey, a randomized clinical trial, and two worksite health promotion programs during 1979-1982. These studies were conducted in several populations in California, Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Energy expenditure estimates from the physical activity recall conformed to expected age- and sex-specific values in the cross-sectional community survey. Estimates of energy expenditure were also congruent with other questions on physical activity and job classification. In a randomized, one-year exercise trial, the physical activity recall detected increases in energy expenditure in the treated group and was positively associated with miles run during training (p less than 0.05). Changes in energy expenditure were associated with changes in maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max (r = 0.33, p less than 0.05) and body fatness (r = - 0.50, p less than 0.01) at six months, and in high density lipoprotein- cholesterol (r = 0.31, p less than 0.05) and triglyceride (r = -0.41, p less than 0.01) at one year. The physical activity recall detected significant (p less than 0.01) increases in energy expenditure in treatment groups in two worksite health promotion projects. These data suggest that the physical activity recall provides useful estimates of habitual physical activity for research in epidemiologic and health education studies.

• Arroll B, Jackson R, Beaglehole R.Validation of a three-month physical activity recall questionnaire with a seven-day food intake and physical activity diary. Epidemiology. 1991 Jul;2(4):296-9.
  
  We assessed the validity of a three-month physical activity questionnaire. The validation instrument was a seven-day self-report diary of physical activity and food intake, given to 113 randomly selected persons. We obtained Spearman correlations of 0.60, 0.48, and 0.91 and kappa scores of 0.36, 0.23, and 0.62 from the physical activity recall and diary for moderate, vigorous, and total activity. We conclude that the three-month recall questionnaire reasonably reflects activity in this community-based sample.

Other notes

• None