Methods and Measures Utilized in Older Adult Physical Activity Intervention Assessments: A Systematic Review

Results from the Health and Human Services' 2023 Physical Activity Guidelines Midcourse Systematic Review indicated that the varying methodological and instrumental approaches to evaluate older adult physical activity interventions created difficulty in evaluating intervention efforts for their midcourse report. Therefore, this secondary review sought to take stock of current physical activity intervention outcome evaluations among older adults and establish recommendations for unifying measurement in the field.

Using PubMed, CINHAL, and PsychInfo databases, relevant information was obtained from 45 articles pertaining to study design, study location, type of physical activity, assessment approaches, reliability, and validity.

Studies often used either self-report or device-measured approaches, with most utilizing self-report measures. Self-report measures used were often not tailored to older adult populations. Cutoff points for device-measured approaches frequently varied when assessing physical activity levels. Studies utilizing self-report and device-measured approaches seldom reported their own assessments of reliability and validity.

Patterns identified in the present investigation provide some insight into the current state of physical activity intervention assessment measurement and can be used to help demonstrate the urgent need to unify measurements of physical activity for older adults.

These results suggest that there was a lack of standardization among physical activity measurements, hindering researchers' ability to draw conclusions about effective intervention strategies. Future work should use these results to establish practices and standardization guidelines for determining the best methodological approaches, adapting established self-report measures for older adults, and establishing cutoff categorizations for device-measured methods.