Validity and Reliability of the Daily Activity Behaviours Questionnaire (DABQ) for Assessment of Time Spent in Sleep, Sedentary Behaviour, and Physical Activity

Thank you to Kaja Kastelic, Research Assistant and PhD Student at the University of Primorska, Slovenia, for sharing her paper titled “Validity and Reliability of the Daily Activity Behaviours Questionnaire (DABQ) for Assessment of Time Spent in Sleep, Sedentary Behaviour, and Physical Activity,” which was recently published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The full publication is available here. Citation details and the summary of the paper are re-posted below.

Kastelic K, Šarabon N, Burnard MD, Pedišić Ž. Validity and Reliability of the Daily Activity Behaviours Questionnaire (DABQ) for Assessment of Time Spent in Sleep, Sedentary Behaviour, and Physical Activity. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2022; 19(9):5362. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095362

Sleep, sedentary behaviour (SB), and physical activity are among key behavioural determinants of health. There is a need to evaluate questionnaires that capture movement behaviours across the full 24-h day. The aim of this study was to examine the measurement properties of the Daily Activity Behaviours Questionnaire (DABQ), a novel questionnaire (with a past seven-day recall period) for estimating the time spent in sleep, SB, light physical activity (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) among adults. A sample of 126 adults was recruited. DABQ was administered to the participants on two occasions seven days apart to examine its test-retest reliability. The convergent validity of DABQ estimates was explored against activPAL4 accelerometer/inclinometer estimates. Intraclass correlation coefficients for absolute agreement and consistency between the times spent in sleep, SB, LPA, and MVPA estimated by DABQ in the test and re-test ranged from 0.59 to 0.69. Spearman’s correlations between the times spent in sleep, SB, LPA, and MVPA estimated by DABQ and activPAL4 ranged from 0.38 to 0.66. In terms of reliability and validity, DABQ is comparable with existing questionnaires; however, it has an important advantage of enabling a comprehensive assessment of all four 24-h movement behaviours. The measurement properties of DABQ make it suitable for large-scale epidemiological studies on 24-h movement behaviours.