OBJECTIVES: The reliable examination of the health enhancing physical activity is one of the main goal of the European Physical Activity and Sport Monitoring System (EUPASMOS) project. The self-report measured physical activity (PA), especially IPAQ-SF are popular but the reliability is not examined among Hungarian adults population. Furthermore several studies proved that sedentary behaviour negatively impacts health status. Our study aim was to compare an important score, the sedentary time measured by accelerometer and IPAQ-SF.

METHODS: The study comprised 593 participating adults (248 males and 345 females, age: 44.41±18.64). The data was collected during February-May 2019 in Budapest and Pécs and their agglomeration, using quota sampling by age and gender representing the Hungarian adult (18+) population. The self-reported physical activity by IPAQ-SF was compared to RM 42 hip-worn triaxial accelerometer for 7 consecutive days. Data were presented as median and interquartile range (IQR), Spearman’s rank correlation was used to compare the objective and subjective PA measurement tools using SPSS 24. program, where level of significance was set at p<0.05.

RESULTS: The IPAQ-SF sedentary time (ST) per day (min/day) for the full sample was 360.00 (240.00-480.00) and the median accelerometer-derived ST was 505.00 (434.50-578.50) min/day. The self-reported and accelerometer-based data were significantly correlated (R=0.236, p<0.001). However the questionnaire results were overestimated the accelerometer-based result. The median difference between the two measurement was 150.00 min/day (-29.00-293.50) Notable result was that the ST was significantly negatively correlated with age (Accelerometer: R=-0.114, p=0.007; IPAQ-SF: R=-0.145; p=0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: Overall, we conclude that the IPAQ-SF was not showed strong reliability in ST examination. The questionnaire was weakly correlated with accelerometer data but further analysis needed to test the validity and reliability of the questionnaire compare to the accelerometer and other measurement tools to suggest the best self-reported questionnaire to measure PA level of the population.