Sedentary behavior in young adults by ecological momentary assessment: Photo observation protocol

Abstract

New ways to obtain information about sedentary behavior (SB) have been recently explored. The aim of the study was to to verify the agreement of the self-reported posture by means of the ecological momentary assessment (EMA) with the images sent, by means of an observation protocol created on a form that could be answered by the mobile phone of young adults. A bank of images provided by 41 university students obtained by a project conducted in 2019 was used, based on the taxonomy of sedentary behavior, and it was chosen to use the verification of the position: sitting, lying/reclining or standing, comparing the image provided with the self-reported SB through the EMA, which was collected by cell phone. The agreement was performed by two researchers independently. Data analysis was performed by descriptive statistics, Student's t, chi-square, and Cohen's k in SPSS 25 with P<0.05. The agreement between the raters was strong/substantial 87.6% (rater 1; k = 0.696) and 88.6% (rater 2; k = 0.720). The image observation protocol created by electronic form was able to discriminate the behaviour adopted by the participant, as well as to be used independently, only the recording of the EMA and/or the image/photograph.