Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire among healthy Hungarian adults

Abstract

Abstract Background Physical activity (PA) is an important factor among the determinants of health due to it’s protective factor and preventive role. Self-reported measures such as questionnaires are most commonly used in public health studies, but may over- or underestimate actual patterns of PA. Therefore, accelerometers are widely used to assess concurrent validity. The aim of the present study was to adapt and validate the self-administered GPAQ - Hungarian version (GPAQ-H) against accelerometer data and IPAQ-Hungarian long version (IPAQ-HL) in Hungarian healthy young adults. Methods A cross-sectional comparative study was conducted to examine the last 7 days PA by GPAQ-H, comparing with IPAQ-HL and Actigraph GT3X accelerometer to measure concurrent validity and reliability. A convenient sample of 300 young adults was recruited in January – July 2018 at the University of Pécs, in South-Hungary, 120 participants (age 21.53 ± 1.75 years, 46.66% male) were included in the validity and reliability study. Results Significant differences between the three instruments were found (p < 0.001) in all scores, except PAQs vigorous activities (p = 0.332) and GPAQ-H and accelerometer MVPA score (p = 0.424). A moderate KMO measure was found (0.538) with a significant Barlett’s test of Sphericity (279.51; p < 0.001). The total variance was explained as 81.10%. The reliability of the GPAQ-H instrument with all domain’s scores was 0.521 (CI 0.371–0.644). We found in all intensity scores and sitting time good reliability scores (R = 0.899–987, p < 0.001) between the baseline and follow-up (N = 33 random subsample). The Bland-Altman plots were showed that GPAQ-H overestimates vigorous activities by 212.75 min/week (331.82–757.42) and MVPA by 104.93 min/week (− 1016.98–807.11). A high difference, 6336.79 min/week (CI 3638.18–9035.40) was revealed regarding sitting, as GPAQ-H largely underestimated the time spent sedentary. Conclusions The Hungarian GPAQ self-administered form showed fair to moderate validity with correlation coefficients similar to other European studies. Based on our study’s results it could be claimed that the GPAQ-H measurement tool is a valid and reliable questionnaire to measure the healthy Hungarian population’s physical activity patterns. However, our results also proved that GPAQ-H alone is not a valid and reliable questionnaire to measure sitting time.