Accelerometry-derived metrics in the occupational field: an evaluation of temporal pattern of physical behaviours and thigh-worn accelerometer data reduction

• Grant number: 23/01672-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate (Direct)
• Start date: August 07, 2023
• End date: August 06, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy
• Principal Investigator: Ana Beatriz de Oliveira
• Grantee: Luiz Augusto Brusaca de Azevedo Laureano da Silva
• Supervisor: Nidhi Gupta
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde (CCBS). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: National Research Centre for the Working Environment (NRCWE), Denmark
• Associated to the scholarship: 19/25140-6 - Chronic and acute effect of using the sit-stand desk as a strategy to reduce sedentary behaviour in administrative workers, BP.DD

Abstract

In the last two decades, accelerometer have been adopted in several studies to monitor physical behaviours. This type of measurement has also been used by studies that investigated the effectiveness of sit-stand table (SST) to decrease sitting time and increase standing time. However, the results of these studies focused on the total volume of behaviors, instead of investigating how behaviors are accumulated throughout the day in uninterrupted bouts of different durations. Another issue is related to the minimum amount of wear time - in both work and leisure domains - necessary to reflect habitual physical behaviors. To fill the gap of these limitations, we propose to develop two studies. Study I will examine the temporal patterns of physical behaviors of overweight/obese office workers who received an intervention with SST in conjunction with an alert system with and without a personalized approach. The study had three groups with fifteen workers each: intervention (SST, reminder system and personalized approach), comparison (SST and reminder system) and control (traditional table). Physical behaviors were monitored over 7 days, using accelerometers, one week before the intervention, at three- and six-month. The 24-hour behavior compositions will be transformed into sets of isometric log-ratio (ilr) coordinates according to standard procedures in compositional data analysis (CoDA). Differences between groups and measurement occasion will be examined using D-MANOVA and ANOVA. Study II will determine the minimum accelerometer wear time - in both work and leisure domains - necessary for reliable measurement of habitual physical behaviors. The study will use data from the 'technically measured compositional Physical wOrk DEmands and prospective association with register-based Sickness Absence study (PODESA) cohort'. PODESA is mainly composed of blue-collar workers from Denmark. Workers had their physical behaviors measured up to five days using a thigh-worn accelerometer and their anthropometric, blood pressure, aerobic capacity and hand grip strength were measured during a health check. Different data sets for the work and leisure domain will be created with different wear time and different number of days. Time-in-bed will also be added to each data set to arrive at a complete composition of daily time-use of physical behaviors. Physical behaviors of each data set will be transformed into sets of ilr-coordinates according to CoDA. Using the ilr-coordinates of each data set, we will determine the minimum accelerometer wear time. (AU)