Physical activity insights from mobile phone and accelerometer data

This is a talk I gave at the "Overcoming Barriers to Movement and Physical Activity Seminar", organised by the Movement and Physical Activity Network at the University of Leeds.

I argue that we need good data in order to devise solutions for overcoming barriers. I cite work from two recent papers, one which utilises accelerometer data and one which used mobile phone app data.

The citations for the papers discussed in the talk:

Pontin, F., Lomax, N., Clarke, G. and Morris, M.A., 2021. Socio-demographic determinants of physical activity and app usage from smartphone data. Social Science & Medicine, 284, p.114235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114235

Clark, S., Lomax, N., Morris, M., Pontin, F. and Birkin, M., 2021. Clustering Accelerometer Activity Patterns from the UK Biobank Cohort. Sensors, 21(24), p.8220. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21248220

Transcript

1. Physical activity insights from mobile phone and accelerometer data N I K L O M A X S C H O O L O F G E O G R A P H Y , U N I V E R S I T Y O F L E E D S N . M . L O M A X @ L E E D S . A C . U K
2. Overcoming Barriers to Movement and Physical Activity • We need data • How do patterns vary? • Can we better target interventions?
3. Accelerometers • Traditional study design • Short term data collection • Only good for acceleration based measurement • Often detailed demographics
4. Mobile phone based apps • Longer term collection • Greater equity • Multiple activity types • Secondary data • Missing context
15. The demographics of activity • Female users walk significantly fewer steps than males • Male users record both a higher average number of activities a day and a higher average number of different activities whilst using the app • Female users recorded longer duration activities on average than the male users. • Users living in more affluent areas had a higher average daily step count and recorded more diverse activity types • However, they record significantly fewer minutes of activity than the users living in less affluent areas
17. Overcoming Barriers to Movement and Physical Activity • We need data • How do patterns vary? • Can we better target interventions? • 23% of adults globally are not sufficiently active • 34% of men and 42% of women in the United Kingdom (UK) not active enough for good health • one in six UK deaths can be attributed to physical inactivity
18. Physical activity insights from mobile phone and accelerometer data N I K L O M A X S C H O O L O F G E O G R A P H Y , U N I V E R S I T Y O F L E E D S N . M . L O M A X @ L E E D S . A C . U K