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Construct validation of the leisure time physical activity questionnaire for people with SCI (LTPAQ-SCI)
Kathleen A Martin Ginis1,2,3,4, Joan Úbeda-Colomer5,6,7, Abdullah A Alrashidi5,8,9
1Department of Medicine, Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. kathleen_martin.ginis@ubc.ca.
Study Design:
Cross-sectional construct validation study.
Objectives:
To test the construct validity of the Leisure Time Physical Activity Questionnaire for People with Spinal Cord Injury (LTPAQ-SCI) by examining associations between the scale responses and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) in a sample of adults living with spinal cord injury (SCI).
Setting:
Three university-based laboratories in Canada.
Methods:
Participants were 39 adults (74% male; M age: 42 ± 11 years) with SCI who completed the LTPAQ-SCI and a graded exercise test to volitional exhaustion using an arm-crank ergometer. One-tailed Pearson's correlation coefficients were computed to examine the association between the LTPAQ-SCI measures of mild-, moderate-, heavy-intensity and total minutes per week of LTPA and CRF (peak volume of oxygen consumption [V̇O2peak] and peak power output [POpeak]).
Results:
Minutes per week of mild-, moderate- and heavy-intensity LTPA and total LTPA were all positively correlated with V̇O2peak. The correlation between minutes per week of mild intensity LTPA and V̇O2peak was small-medium (r = 0.231, p = 0.079) while all other correlations were medium-large (rs ranged from 0.276 to 0.443, ps < 0.05). Correlations between the LTPAQ-SCI variables and POpeak were also positive but small (rs ranged from 0.087 to 0.193, ps > 0.05), except for a medium-sized correlation between heavy-intensity LTPA and POpeak (r = 0.294, p = 0.035).
Conclusions:
People with SCI who report higher levels of LTPA on the LTPAQ-SCI also demonstrate greater levels of CRF, with stronger associations between moderate- and heavy-intensity LTPA and CRF than between mild-intensity LTPA and CRF. These results provide further support for the construct validity of the LTPAQ-SCI as a measure of LTPA among people with SCI.
