Children's Compliance With Wrist-Worn Accelerometry Within a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial: Findings From the...

The purpose of this study was to assess children's compliance with wrist-worn accelerometry during a randomized controlled trial and to examine whether compliance differed by allocated condition or gender.

A total of 886 children within the Healthy Lifestyles Programme trial were randomly allocated to wear a GENEActiv accelerometer at baseline and 18-month follow-up. Compliance with minimum wear-time criteria (≥10 h for 3 weekdays and 1 weekend day) was obtained for both time points. Chi-square tests were used to determine associations between compliance, group allocation, and gender.

At baseline, 851 children had usable data, 830 (97.5%) met the minimum wear-time criteria, and 631 (74.1%) had data for 7 days at 24 hours per day. At follow-up, 789 children had usable data, 745 (94.4%) met the minimum wear-time criteria, and 528 (67%) had complete data. Compliance did not differ by gender (baseline: χ² = 1.66, P = .2; follow-up: χ² = 0.76, P = .4) or by group at follow-up (χ² = 2.35, P = .13).

The use of wrist-worn accelerometers and robust trial procedures resulted in high compliance at 2 time points regardless of group allocation, demonstrating the feasibility of using precise physical activity monitors to measure intervention effectiveness.