Reliability of a smartphone application to measure physical activity

Area of Science:

• Health Sciences
• Biomedical Engineering
• Sports Science

Background:

• Accurate measurement of physical activity parameters like steps is crucial for health monitoring and research.
• Smartphone applications offer a convenient and accessible method for tracking daily physical activity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the accuracy of the My Active Life smartphone application in measuring steps compared to a validated device and a manual counter.
• To determine the reliability of the app for different step counts during controlled walking activities.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 46 undergraduate physical education students (male and female).
• Utilized a tally counter, Xiaomi Mi Band 2 (validated device), and My Active Life app for step counting.
• Participants completed three low-intensity treadmill walks (5 km/h) targeting 500, 1000, and 1500 steps.
• Employed Bland-Altman plots for visual agreement analysis.

Main Results:

• No significant interaction was found between step counts and devices during treadmill tests (p=0.07).
• The My Active Life app showed no significant difference from zero for 500-step (p=0.177) and 1500-step (p=0.221) walks.
• Bland-Altman analysis revealed acceptable agreement between the My Active Life app and Mi Band for 1000-step and 1500-step walks.

Conclusions:

• The My Active Life app demonstrates accuracy in measuring total steps, particularly for longer walking distances (over 1000 steps).
• The app is suitable for both daily physical activity monitoring and use in research settings due to its demonstrated accuracy.