An Approach to "Move a Little & Often" With Health Conditions

The IPAQ will be used to measure frequency and duration of sedentariness, and any increase in physical activity. The IPAQ asks about walking, moderate intensity activities and vigorous-intensity activities. In order to compute the total score, it requires summation of the durations (minutes) and frequency (days) of walking, moderate-intensity and vigorous-intensity activities.

The Sedentary Behaviour Questionnaire is a seven-item questionnaire that asks participants to report on activities they did during the last week while they were sitting or lying down, and to report the total time spent in each activity. The seven individual sedentary items are TV or video/DVD watching, computer use, reading, socializing with friends or family, time traveling in a motor vehicle or on public transport, doing hobbies, and any other activities they did while they were sitting or lying down. The measure has previously been used in a study of sedentariness in older adults (Gardiner, et al. 2011).

The ISAT contains 5 items relating to total time spent sedentary and time spent doing specific activities: television use, computer use, using transport, and reading. Participants will be asked how much time they spend on each activity over the course of a typical week. Psychometric properties have yet to be reported for this questionnaire measure.

The HADS will measure depression and anxiety. The HADS is a 14-item self-report screening scale for anxiety and depression symptoms. It contains two 7 item scales: one for anxiety and one for depression; both of which have a score ranging from 0-21. The HADS is commonly used in research studies and has good validity (Bjelland et al. 2002, et al. 2005).

Pain will be measured using the 0-10 Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) (Herr and Mobily 1993). Participants will be asked to rate their pain over the previous week. This questionnaire has been found to correlate significantly with other pain measures (Herr, et al. 2004). Scores can range from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating more pain.

Sleep quality and disturbances will be measured using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (Buysse, et al. 1989). The questionnaire can be used to generate seven component scores for subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleep medication, and daytime dysfunction. Each of the seven component scores is weighted equally on a scale of 0 (no difficulty) to 3 (severe difficulty). The seven component scores are then summed to yield a global PSQI score, ranging from 0 to 21, with a higher score indicating poorer sleep quality.

Quality of life will be measured using items from the Measure of National Wellbeing used by the Office for National Statistics. Participants will be asked: overall, how satisfied they are with life nowadays; overall, to what extent they feel the things they do in life are worthwhile; overall, how happy they felt yesterday; overall, how anxious they felt yesterday?. Each question is answered on a scale of 0 to 10. People are asked to respond on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is "not at all" and 10 is "completely". Mean ratings for all 4 personal well-being questions will be calculated.

The SF 12 is a 12 item measure with two scales: mental and physical functioning and overall health-related-quality of life. The SF-12 is weighted and summed to provide Physical and Mental Health Composite Scores (PCS & MCS). These two composite scores are computed using the scores of twelve questions and range from 0 to 100, where a zero score indicates the lowest level of health measured by the scales and 100 indicates the highest level of health. The questionnaire was adapted from the SF-36 Health Survey and its results can be compared with the SF36 (Jenkinson, et al. 1997)

Social support will be measured using the ENRICHD Social Support Instrument (Mitchell, et al. 2003). The ENRICHD Social Support Instrument (ESSI) is a brief seven-item measure of perceived social support. The scale contains six social support items that have been shown to be individually predictive of poor outcome in patients with cardiac disease, and one item that assesses partner status.

The SRBAI will be used to measure habit strength for avoiding sedentariness. Participants will be asked to rate 4 items on a Likert scale of 0 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The 4 items are: avoiding being sedentary is something:- 1) I do automatically; 2) I do without having to consciously remember,3) I do without thinking, 4) I start doing before I realise I'm doing it.