Can Wearable Cameras Be Used to Validate School-Aged Children’s Lifestyle Behaviours?

Wearable cameras combined with accelerometers have been used to estimate the accuracy of children’s self-report of physical activity, health-related behaviours, and the contexts in which they occur. There were two aims to this study; the first was to validate questions regarding self-reported health and lifestyle behaviours in 9–11-year-old children using the child’s health and activity tool (CHAT), an accelerometer and a wearable camera. Second, the study sought to evaluate ethical challenges associated with taking regular photographs using a wearable camera through interviews with children and their families. Fourteen children wore an autographer and hip-worn triaxial accelerometer for the waking hours of one school and one weekend day. For both of these days, children self-reported their behaviours chronologically and sequentially using the CHAT. Data were examined using limits of agreement and percentage agreement to verify if reference methods aligned with self-reported behaviours. Six parent–child dyads participated in interviews. Seven, five, and nine items demonstrated good, acceptable, and poor validity, respectively. This demonstrates that the accuracy of children’s recall varies according to the behaviour or item being measured. This is the first study to trial the use of wearable cameras in assessing the concurrent validity of children’s physical activity and behaviour recall, as almost all other studies have used parent proxy reports alongside accelerometers. Wearable cameras carry some ethical and technical challenges, which were examined in this study. Parents and children reported that the autographer was burdensome and in a few cases invaded privacy. This study demonstrates the importance of adhering to an ethical framework.