The Use of Physical Activity Trackers in Portuguese Adolescents and

Adults

Vítor P. Lopes

1,2

and Carla Sá

Departamento de Ciências do Desporto, Escola Superior de Educação, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Portugal

Research Centre in Sport, Health and Human Development (CIDESD), Portugal

1 OBJECTIVES

The pandemic of physical inactivity is associated with

a range of chronic diseases and early deaths (Ding et

al., 2016). Estimates from 2012 indicated that not

meeting physical activity recommendations is

responsible for more than 5 million deaths globally

each year (Lee et al., 2012). Nowadays, sedentary

behaviours are highly prevalent, and data from adults

in high-income countries suggest the majority of time

awake is spent being sedentary (Matthews et al.,

2008).

Physical activity can be promoted in different

ways, including delivery of advice, provision of

written materials, referral to an exercise programme,

etc. Wearable monitors (physical activity trackers)

that provide feedback to users have also been used in

longitudinal interventions to motivate research

participants and to assess their compliance with

program goals (David, 2012). Physical activity

trackers, as pedometers, accelerometers, smartphone

applications and heart rate monitors, could be an

important complement that enable people to modified

their sedentary behaviour and to monitor their

physical activity and exercise (Wen et al., 2017).

Despite the potential and the wide range of

wearables available, little is known about the interest,

usage, preferences (Alley et al., 2016), even the

efficacy for using wearables in physical activity

levels.

This study aimed to investigate the use of physical

activity trackers in Portugal, in particular how often

people use it and how they use it to monitor

exercise/physical activity.

2 METHODS

2.1 Participants

Participants were N = 1498, of both sexes (N = 841

females) with ages between 14 and 85 years.

Inclusion criteria were being 14 years old or more

and residing in Portugal. Participants were recruited

from schools, universities, clubs, work sites, and

communities’ settings. Participants residing in

different regions of Portugal mainland (North,

Centre, Lisbon, Alentejo and Algarve), Madeira

islands, and Azores islands.

Questionnaire was distributed and answered in

paper format and online. In both cases, participants

gave their informed consent. The participants that

answered online were invited by email, explaining the

objectives of the study and including a link to the

online questionnaire. In order to select a large sample

we requested that the email be forwarded to

acquaintances and friends.

Participants were categorized by age

into

adolescents (ages 14-18 years), young adults (ages 19-

40 years), middle-aged adults (ages 41-65 years), and

older adults (aged older than 65 years). Besides, sex

and age, sociodemographic factors included education

level (no tertiary education, tertiary education less than

master level, and master and doctoral level), and

occupation. The occupation of the participants was

defined according to the Occupation Portuguese

Classification nomenclature (Instituto Nacional de

Estatística, 2010), and was subsequently classified into

3 levels: white collar (that includes the classes 0-4),

blue collar (that include the classes 5-9) and without

job (students and retired subjects) (Table 1).

2.2 Interest, Use and Preferences for

Activity Trackers

Interest, use and preferences for activity trackers were

measured troughs 11 multiple-choice questions.

First, participants were asked if they do, or they

did in the past, or if they not do exercise regularly.

The ones that answers they or they did exercise

regularly were asked how many times in a week.

Tracker use was assessed in the participants that do or

did exercise regularly by asking if they had ever used

wearable devices (yes/no). Participants who use

Lopes, V. and Sá, C.

The Use of Physical Activity Trackers in Portuguese Adolescents and Adults.

In Extended Abstracts (icSPORTS 2018), pages 10-13

wearables devices were further asked what type of

wearable they use, if thy acquired the tracker before

or after they start exercise regularly, what parameters

they register (time length of the exercise, speed,

distance, hearth rate, calories, accumulated climb,

power, VO2), how often they used the tracker (only

during exercise, during waking hours, only at night,

always all day and all night). A question about the

parameter that they think trackers should register was

also included.

Participants were also asked about their

perception of the possible influence of activity

trackers on the motivation for physical activity /

exercise (yes/no), and if they increased the amount of

physical activity/exercise after starting using it

(yes/no), and how much.

Participants who had not used a physical activity

tracker were asked if they would be interested in

using one (yes/no).

2.3 Statistical Analysis

Frequencies and Qui-squared were calculated with

IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 22.0

(Armonk, NY: IBM Corp)

3 RESULTS

More than a half of participants (57.1%) practiced

physical activity/exercise regularly (30.6% of these

were female), and 36.1% practiced in the past. Only

4.4% of the adolescents answer that they not practiced

and 17.8% of the older adults, 6.1 and 8.5%

respectively of young adults and middle-age adults do

not regularly do physical activity/exercise. Only 0.9%

practiced occasionally and 3.6% once a week. Three

times a week was the most frequent frequency of

practice (24.9%), 7.4% do it every day. Table 2 shows

the week frequency of practice by sex and age.

Table 1: Descriptive characteristics of participants.

Demographic factors n (%)

Sex

Males 841 (56.1)

Females 657 (43.9)

Age (years)

14-18 years 79 (5.3)

19-40 years 1047 (69.9)

41-65 years 242 (16.2)

Over 65 years 45 (3.0)

Education

No tertiary education 671(44.8

Tertiary education < master level 481(32.1)

Master / doctoral level 346(23.1)

Occupation

White Collar 623 (41.6)

Blue Collar 814 (54.3)

Not employed 61 (4.1)

Table 2: Frequency of the week practice by sex and age.

Age Occasionally 1·week

-1

2·week

-1

3·week

-1

4·week

-1

5·week

-1

6·week

-1

7·week

-1

Females

Adolescents 1.4% 4.1% 11.0% 28.8% 24.7% 12.3% 12.3% 5.5%

Young adults 1.1% 4.3% 23.2% 22.6% 19.3% 15.0% 7.1% 7.5%

Middle-aged

adults

0.8% 1.6% 27.6% 24.4% 21.3% 12.6% 4.7% 7.1%

Older adults 7.1% 7.1% 57.1% 21.4% 7.1%

Total females 1.0% 3.9% 22.5% 24.1% 19.7% 14.5% 7.2% 7.1%

Males

Adolescents

12.3% 26.3% 14.0% 12.3% 28.1% 7.0%

Young adults 1.0% 2.9% 18.6% 24.2% 19.3% 16.2% 11.1% 6.8%

Middle-aged

adults

6.0% 21.4% 29.1% 12.8% 16.2% 5.1% 9.4%

Older adults 4.2% 20.8% 41.7% 8.3% 8.3%

16.7%

Total males 0.7% 3.3% 18.6% 26.0% 17.2% 15.5% 11.1% 7.7%

Females and males

Adolescents 0.8% 2.3% 11.5% 27.7% 20.0% 12.3% 19.2% 6.2%

Young adults 1.0% 3.7% 21.2% 23.3% 19.3% 15.5% 8.8% 7.2%

Middle-aged

adults

0.4% 3.7% 24.6% 26.6% 17.2% 14.3% 4.9% 8.2%

Older adults 5.3% 15.8% 47.4% 5.3% 13.2% 2.6% 10.5%

Grand total 0.9% 3.6% 20.8% 24.9% 18.6% 14.9% 8.9% 7.4%

The Use of Physical Activity Trackers in Portuguese Adolescents and Adults

Table 3: Frequency of the parameters registered.

Parameter Frequency

Time length of the exercise 28.0%

Speed 19,8%

Distance 25.6%

Hearth rate 18.4%

Calories 19.6%

Accumulated climb 8.7%

Power 4.8%

VO2 3.1%

Of the participants who practice physical

activity/exercise regularly, 59% do not use activity

trackers, 27% were using, and 14% have used. The

majority of the participants (80.1%) acquired the

tracker after they started exercise regularly. The

parameters most register was time length of the

exercise (28%) and distance (25.6%) (Table 3).

The majority of the participants use the tracker

only during exercise (73.9%), 14.4% use it during

waking hours, 11.2% use it always, and only 0.4% use

it only during the night.

The

frequency of the parameters that participants

think trackers should register are shown in Table 4.

The most desired parameters were the time length of

the activity (27.8%), heart rate (25.8%) and exercise

intensity (25,7%).

Participant’s perception about the possible

influence of activity trackers on the motivation for

physical activity/exercise was low, 5% answer ‘yes’,

1.5% answer ‘no’, and the majority (93.5%) did not

answer the question.

Table 4: Frequency of the parameters that participants think

trackers should register.

Parameter Frequency

Step count 11.8%

Acceleration/movement of the body 10.8%

Heart rate 25.8%

Calories 21.8%

GPS track 17.7%

Sleeping pattern 11.4%

Exercise intensity 25.7%

Time length of the activity 27.8%

The most frequently used device was mobile

applications (22.2%), 11.1% used heart rate monitors,

and 11.4% used GPS. From the wearable device

users, 9.7% think that it had allow them to increase

their physical activity, 3.2% at least 1 hour/weak,

3.7% at least 1-2 hours/weak, 1.8% at least 3-4

hours/weak, and 0.9% more than 4 hours/weak.

From the participants who had not used a physical

activity tracker 72.4% would like to use one.

Independent of the sex there was not significant

differences between age groups in the desire to use a

physical activity tracker (Table 5).

4 DISCUSSION

The main goal of this study was to find out how

tracker monitors are being used in Portugal, in

particular how often people use it and how they use it

to monitor exercise/physical activity. The sample of

this survey study, were no randomly selected, which

is a limitations, is a convenience sample recruited

with a kind of snowball sampling. Even though it is

diculty drawing general conclusions about the

general population, this study is unique in the way it

were recruited a large sample from all over the

country, which is hard to achieve.

Table 5: Frequency of participants that would like to use a

physical activity tracker by sex and age.

Age group Yes No

Females

Adolescents 64.7% 35.3%

Young adults 70.6% 29.4%

Middle-aged adults 72.6% 27.4%

Older adults 90.0% 10.0%

Total females 70.8% 29.2%

Males

Adolescents 63.3% 36.7%

Young adults 77.8% 22.2%

Middle-aged adults 70.5% 29.5%

Older adults 53.8% 46.2%

Total males 74.7% 25.3%

Females and Males

Adolescents 64.2% 35.8%

Young adults 73.7% 26.3%

Middle-aged adults 71.8% 28.2%

Older adults 69.6% 30.4%

Grand Total 72,4% 27,6%

icSPORTS 2018 - 6th International Congress on Sport Sciences Research and Technology Support

The majority of the participants do exercise

regularly and about half of them use physical activity

trackers during the practice, which demonstrate that

participants have some interest in using physical

activity trackers and monitoring the exercise.

The most used tracker was mobile application,

maybe because everyone has a mobile phone and

apps are cheaper (sometimes free of charge) than a

physical tracker. The most popular function of the

trackers was the ‘

time length of the exercise’, ‘speed’,

‘distance’, following by ‘hearth rate’. The participant’s

perception about influence of activity trackers on the

motivation for physical activity/exercise was low.

Anyway the majority of the participants that not have

a physical activity tracker would like to have one.

In conclusion about half of the participants that

exercise regularly use physical activity trackers

during the practice, and the ones that do not have one

would like to have.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Both authors were supported by the Portuguese

Foundation for Science and Technology under Grants

DTP/04045/2013; POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006969

and UID/DTP/00617/2013; and by NORTE 2020

under Grant NanoSTIMA: Macro-to-Nano Human

Sensing: Towards Integrated Multimodal Health

Monitoring and Analytics, NORTE-01-0145-

FEDER-000016.

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The Use of Physical Activity Trackers in Portuguese Adolescents and Adults