Development of Questionnaire to Examine Relationship of Physical Activity and Diabetes in Pima Indians

TLDR

The study aimed to design a questionnaire that could accurately assess Native American activity patterns and evaluate their relationship with diabetes. The questionnaire, covering historical, past‑year, and past‑week leisure and occupational activity, was developed for the Pima Indian Study of Arizona, tested for reliability in 29 adults, and its validity was indirectly confirmed by comparison with activity monitors. Reliability testing yielded rank‑order correlations of 0.62–0.96 for leisure and occupational activity, reproducibility was high in all age groups except 10–14 years, and past‑week leisure activity showed a weak correlation with Caltrac counts, confirming the questionnaire’s reliability and feasibility for studying physical activity in relation to non‑insulin‑dependent diabetes.

Abstract

There was a need to design a questionnaire that could accurately assess the activity patterns of Native Americans to evaluate the relationship between physical activity and diabetes. Such a questionnaire was developed and implemented into the data collection scheme of the prospective Pima Indian Study of Arizona. The questionnaire, which assesses historical, past-year, and past-week leisure and occupational activity, was examined in 29 Pima individuals aged 21–36 yr and was shown to be reliable with test-retest correlations (rank-order correlations ranged from 0.62 to 0.96 for leisure and occupational activity). Reproducibility of the past-year leisure physical-activity estimate was determined in 69 participants aged 10-59 yr and was found to be reliable in all age-groups with the exception of the 10- to 14-yr-old age-group (rank-order correlations were 0.31 in the 10- to 14-yr-old age-group compared to 0.88 to 0.92 in those >20 yr of age). Validity of the current-activity section of the questionnaire was demonstrated indirectly through comparisons with activity monitors. The past-week leisure-activity estimate was related to the Caltrac activity monitor counts per hour (p = 0.62, P > 0.05, n = 17). In summary, a physical-activity questionnaire has been developed that is both reliable and feasible to use in the Pima Indian population to evaluate the relationship of physical activity to non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.