Development of a 24-hour movement behaviors questionnaire (24HMBQ) for Chinese college students: validity and reliability testing

BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA), sedentary behaviors (SB), and sleep are interrelated behavior components of a 24-hour day. Research interests continue to increase in examining the inter-relationship of three behaviors and their combined effects on health. The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive instrument to measure 24-hour movement behaviors for Chinese college students. METHODS: The 24-hour movement behaviors questionnaire (24HMBQ) was developed based on a literature review and expert review. The target population (Chinese college students) and an expert panel assessed the face and content validity. After the final revision of the questionnaire, the participants (n = 229) were asked to complete the 24HMBQ twice to examine test-retest reliability. Convergent validity was evaluated using Spearman’s rho, by comparing the 24HMBQ estimates of sleep, SB, and PA with results derived from the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the Adult Sedentary Behaviors Questionnaire in China (ASBQC), and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire - Short Form (IPAQ-SF). RESULTS: The 24HMBQ exhibited good face validity and high acceptability to respondents. Regarding content validity, the S-CVI/UA and S-CVI/Ave were 0.88 and 0.97, respectively. As indicated by ICC, the test-retest reliability was considered moderate to excellent, ranging from 0.68 to 0.97 (P < 0.01). Regarding the convergent validity, correlations were 0.32 for the duration of sleep per day, 0.33 for total time of physical activity per day, and 0.43 for the duration of sedentary behaviors per day. CONCLUSION: The 24HMBQ is a feasible questionnaire with suitable validity and moderate to excellent test-retest reliability of all items. It is a promising tool to investigate 24-hour movement behaviors of Chinese college students. The 24HMBQ can be administrated in epidemiological studies. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-023-15393-5.