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A PILOT STUDY USING AN ACCELEROMETER TO EVALUATE A CAREGIVER'S INTERPRETATION OF AN INFANT OR TODDLER'S ACTIVITY LEVEL AS RECORDED IN A TIME ACTIVITY DIARY
Citation:
TULVE, N. S., P. A. JONES, T. R. MCCURDY, AND C. W. CROGHAN. A PILOT STUDY USING AN ACCELEROMETER TO EVALUATE A CAREGIVER'S INTERPRETATION OF AN INFANT OR TODDLER'S ACTIVITY LEVEL AS RECORDED IN A TIME ACTIVITY DIARY. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, Reston, VA, 78(4):375-383, (2007).
Impact/Purpose:
The overall goal of this research program is to identify those chemicals, pathways, and activities that represent the highest potential exposures to children and to determine the factors that influence these exposures. The following objectives will address this goal: (1) Revise and refine the existing research plan for children's exposure measurements research. (2) Collect measurement data on children's exposures. (3) Provide analytical support to children's pesticide exposure research. (4) Develop analytical methods for pesticides in duplicate diet food samples. (5) Develop and apply analytical methods for other chemicals including but not limited to brominated diphenyl ethers, phthalates, perfluorinated chemicals. (6) Evaluate the impact of chiral chemistry on the risk to children and exposure assessment. (7) Provide support to the National Children's Study. (8) Perform data analyses to fill critical data gaps. (9) Conduct analyses of dietary samples and refine the dietary model for the dietary exposure algorithm.
Description:
Linking a young child's activity pattern data with samples that are collected during an exposure assessment is important in evaluating uptake dose rates associated with environmental contaminant exposures. A pilot study (N=9) was performed to test how well categorical activity-level data for young children (≤ 24 months old) collected from paper time activity diaries normally used in exposure studies compared with objective activity-level information (i.e., counts) obtained using an accelerometer. The infants and toddlers wore an accelerometer for up to 4 days, while their primary caregiver simultaneously completed a time activity diary and intermittently videotaped them engaged in eating, quiet play, and active play type activities. Our findings indicate that infants and toddlers tolerate wearing an accelerometer for multiple days of data collection and that caregiver compliance was good on completing all study components. Statistical analyses showed a relatively strong positive relationship between diary entries and accelerometer output (Spearman r=0.42; p<0.0001). When the diary entries and accelerometer data were classified categorically, the classifications were identical for 70% of all entries for the entire cohort during the monitoring period. Gender and age were not significant predictors of variability in activity levels, but this was probably due to the small sample size and narrow age range of study participants.