Adapting the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire for Japanese pregnant women

Abstract

Objective: To assess the psychometric properties of the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire (PPAQ) for women who read and speak Japanese.

Design: This longitudinal study used a self-report questionnaire and quantitative biometric and instrumental measurements (actigraph) to assess the reliability and criterion validity.

Setting: A university hospital in Tokyo, Japan.

Participants: Sixty-nine pregnant women living in Tokyo and its suburbs were recruited.

Methods: The test-retest reliability of the Japanese version of the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire (PPAQ-J) was evaluated through intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) between PPAQ-J results administered three times (at recruitment, 7 and 14 days later). Criterion validity was assessed by comparing results to actigraph measures using Spearman's correlation coefficients. Participants wore the actigraph over the 2-week research period. Data from 58 participants were analyzed for test-retest reliability. The data of 54 participants were used to analyze criterion validity.

Results: The ICCs for the first and second and for the first and third PPAQ-J questionnaires were ≥0.56 for total activity and activities broken down by intensity and type (in metabolic equivalents [METs] × hours/day). To evaluate criterion validity, Spearman's correlation coefficients were calculated between the first measurement of the PPAQ-J and three published cut-points used to classify actigraph data (minutes/day); correlations ranged from .02 to .35 for total activity, -.21 to -.25 for vigorous activity, -.09 to .38 for moderate activity, and .01 to .28 for light activity.

Conclusion: The PPAQ-J is a psychometrically sound and comprehensive measure of physical activity in pregnant Japanese women.

Keywords: longitudinal study; motor activity; pregnancy; questionnaire; reproducibility.