Rationale
In today’s increasingly sedentary lifestyle, a substantial emphasis has been placed on incorporating physical activity into our daily lives. Given the well-known relationship between sedentary lifestyle choices and chronic disease (Boyle et al. 2010; Ganzit & Stefanini 2012; Na & Oliynyk 2011), physical activity promotion has become a Significant goal for University students. As physical activity has grown to be a predominate aspect of preventative medicine, accelerometer-based tracking devices, which encourage self-regulatory data management, have become a growing market within the fitness community (Loprinzi 2015). One such device known as the Fitbit tracker, which saves activity data, stores it to the app, and then produces simples …show more content…
It has been shown by Diaz et al. (2015, p. 138), that Fitbit underestimated steps taken by between 10.6-16.3% and overestimated calories burned by up to 52.4%. The overestimation of calories burnt, is due to misinterpretation of movement from the fitbit device, which takes educated guesses of energy expenditure, based on the dynamics of arm movement (Sasaki 2015). Another study competed by takacs et al. (2013, p. 496), has shown distance output of the Fitbit to be highly inaccurate, with differences between actual distance differing by up to 39.6 %. Although Fitbit devices are have been shown to have issues of validity, making them unsuitable for situations requiring a gold standard of measurement, they remain a fairly accurate means of measuring physical activity and sedentary behaviour in the majority of the population (Sasaki 2015; Diaz et al. …show more content…
As cancer and cardiovascular disease are two of most common causes of death within modern Australia (ABS 2013), physical activity is being used not only as an effect means of prevention, but also as a treatment. Additionally, physical activity has been shown to improve quality of life, through its reduction in obesity, improved cardiorespiratory fitness, and increases in longevity throughout later life (Boyle et al. 2010). For these reasons, being physically active rather than sedentary, is a desired attribute of the population, or more specifically, university students. However, a large population of Australian young adults (18-24), are not sufficiently active to achieve the previously described effects, with only 43% of being sufficiently active (As defined as 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days) (ABS 2012).
Although fitbit devices have been tested extensively for validity in regards to gold standards of measurement, a substantial gap in research towards fitbits ability to encouraged physical activity has been found. Given its use as a fitness aid, the fitbit flex has the potential to be and advantageous device, that combines to use of data recording, with a user friendly
In today’s increasingly sedentary lifestyle, a substantial emphasis has been placed on incorporating physical activity into our daily lives. Given the well-known relationship between sedentary lifestyle choices and chronic disease (Boyle et al. 2010; Ganzit & Stefanini 2012; Na & Oliynyk 2011), physical activity promotion has become a Significant goal for University students. As physical activity has grown to be a predominate aspect of preventative medicine, accelerometer-based tracking devices, which encourage self-regulatory data management, have become a growing market within the fitness community (Loprinzi 2015). One such device known as the Fitbit tracker, which saves activity data, stores it to the app, and then produces simples …show more content…
It has been shown by Diaz et al. (2015, p. 138), that Fitbit underestimated steps taken by between 10.6-16.3% and overestimated calories burned by up to 52.4%. The overestimation of calories burnt, is due to misinterpretation of movement from the fitbit device, which takes educated guesses of energy expenditure, based on the dynamics of arm movement (Sasaki 2015). Another study competed by takacs et al. (2013, p. 496), has shown distance output of the Fitbit to be highly inaccurate, with differences between actual distance differing by up to 39.6 %. Although Fitbit devices are have been shown to have issues of validity, making them unsuitable for situations requiring a gold standard of measurement, they remain a fairly accurate means of measuring physical activity and sedentary behaviour in the majority of the population (Sasaki 2015; Diaz et al. …show more content…
As cancer and cardiovascular disease are two of most common causes of death within modern Australia (ABS 2013), physical activity is being used not only as an effect means of prevention, but also as a treatment. Additionally, physical activity has been shown to improve quality of life, through its reduction in obesity, improved cardiorespiratory fitness, and increases in longevity throughout later life (Boyle et al. 2010). For these reasons, being physically active rather than sedentary, is a desired attribute of the population, or more specifically, university students. However, a large population of Australian young adults (18-24), are not sufficiently active to achieve the previously described effects, with only 43% of being sufficiently active (As defined as 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days) (ABS 2012).
Although fitbit devices have been tested extensively for validity in regards to gold standards of measurement, a substantial gap in research towards fitbits ability to encouraged physical activity has been found. Given its use as a fitness aid, the fitbit flex has the potential to be and advantageous device, that combines to use of data recording, with a user friendly