Is Sitting Always Inactive and Standing Always Active? A Simultaneous Free-Living activPal and ActiGraph Analysis

Abstract

Sedentary Behavior (SB), defined as sitting with minimal physical activity, is an emergent public health topic. However, the measurement of SB considers either posture (e.g., activPal) or physical activity (e.g., ActiGraph), and thus neglects either active sitting or inactive standing. The aim of this study was to determine the true amount of active sitting and inactive standing in daily life, and to analyze by how much these behaviors falsify the single sensors’ sedentary estimates. Sedentary time of 100 office workers estimated with activPal and ActiGraph was therefore compared with Bland-Altman statistics to a combined sensor analysis, the posture and physical activity index (POPAI). POPAI classified each activPal sitting and standing event into inactive or active using the ActiGraph counts. Participants spent 45.0% [32.2%–59.1%] of the waking hours inactive sitting (equal to SB), 13.7% [7.8%–21.6%] active sitting, and 12.0% [5.7%–24.1%] inactive standing (mean [5th–95th percentile]). The activPal overestimated sedentary time by 30.3% [12.3%–48.4%] and the ActiGraph by 22.5% [3.2%–41.8%] (bias [95% limit-of-agreement]). The results showed that sitting is not always inactive, and standing is not always active. Caution should therefore be paid when interpreting the activPal (ignoring active sitting) and ActiGraph (ignoring inactive standing) measured time as SB.