Measuring physical activity in older adults: calibrating cut-points for the MotionWatch 8(©)

Given the world’s aging population, the staggering economic impact of dementia, the lack of effective treatments, and the fact a cure for dementia is likely many years away – there is an urgent need to develop interventions to prevent or at least delay dementia’s progression. Thus, lifestyle approaches to promote healthy aging are an important line of scientific inquiry. Good sleep quality and physical activity (PA) are pillars of healthy aging, and as such, are an increasing focus for intervention studies aimed at promoting health and cognitive function in older adults. However, PA and sleep quality are difficult constructs to evaluate empirically. Wrist-worn actigraphy (WWA) is currently accepted as a valid objective measure of sleep quality. The MotionWatch 8(©) (MW8) is the latest WWA, replacing the discontinued Actiwatch 4 and Actiwatch 7. In the current study, concurrent measurement of WWA and indirect calorimetry was performed during 10 different activities of daily living for 23 healthy older adults (aged 57–80 years) to determine cut-points for sedentary and moderate-vigorous PA – using receiver operating characteristic curves – with the cut-point for light activity being the boundaries between sedentary and moderate to vigorous PA. In addition, simultaneous multi-unit reliability was determined for the MW8 using inter-class correlations. The current study is the first to validate MW8 activity count cut-points – for sedentary, light, and moderate to vigorous PA – specifically for use with healthy older adults. These cut-points provide important context for better interpretation of MW8 activity counts, and a greater understanding of what these counts mean in terms of PA. Hence, our results validate another level of analysis for researchers using the MW8 in studies aiming to examine PA and sleep quality concurrently in older adults.