Recommendations for standardizing validation procedures assessing physical activity of older persons by monitoring body postures and movements

Abstract

Physical activity is an important determinant of health and well-being in older persons and contributes to their social participation and quality of life. Hence, assessment tools are needed to study this physical activity in free-living conditions. Wearable motion sensing technology is used to assess physical activity. However, there is a lack of harmonisation of validation protocols and applied statistics, which make it hard to compare available and future studies. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to formulate recommendations for assessing the validity of sensor-based activity monitoring in older persons with focus on the measurement of body postures and movements. Validation studies of body-worn devices providing parameters on body postures and movements were identified and summarized and an extensive inter-active process between authors resulted in recommendations about: information on the assessed persons, the technical system, and the analysis of relevant parameters of physical activity, based on a standardized and semi-structured protocol. The recommended protocols can be regarded as a first attempt to standardize validity studies in the area of monitoring physical activity.