Using Television-Viewing Hours and Total Hours Sitting as Interchangeable Measures of Sedentary Behavior

Sedentary behaviors, activities spent sitting, or lying down during waking hours, are of significant public health importance. Television-viewing (TV-viewing) hours and total hours sitting are common self-report measures of sedentary behaviors. Given the widespread usage of these measures, the study purpose was to measure the concordance between TV-viewing hours and total hours sitting to determine whether they can be used as interchangeable measures of time spent in sedentary behavior. Using a sample (n = 2687) of workers from a group-randomized control trial, the current study assessed the concordance between weekday total hours sitting and TV-viewing hours. Tertiles were created based on the distribution of total hours sitting and TV-viewing hours. Weighted Kappa (Kappa_w) statistics were calculated for the full sample and subgroups. Half of the sample reported 2 to 3 daily hours of TV-viewing hours and the most reported total hours sitting was 8 hours (14%). Kappa_w statistics for tertiles of total hours sitting and TV-viewing hours were 0.005 (95% CI = -0.02 to 0.03), indicating little agreement. Kappa_w statistics for subgroup analyses (body mass index categories, gender, and intervention assignment) showed poor agreement. Results do not support the use of total hours sitting and TV-viewing hours as interchangeable measures of sedentary behavior.