Momentary mood predicts upcoming real-life sedentary behavior

The Within-Subject Association of Physical Behavior and Affective Well-Being in Everyday Life: A Systematic Literature Review

BACKGROUND

The interplay of physical activity (PA) with affective well-being (AWB) is highly critical to both health behaviors and health outcomes. Current prominent theories presume AWB to be crucial for PA maintenance, and PA is evidenced to foster mental health. However, thus far, PA-AWB associations have mainly been researched in laboratory settings and with interventional designs, but the everyday life perspective had not been focused on, mostly due to technological limitations. In the course of digitization, the number of studies using device-based methods to research the within-subject association of physical activity and affective well-being (PA-AWB) under ecological valid conditions increased rapidly, but a recent comprehensive systematic review of evidence across populations, age groups, and distinct AWB components remained inconclusive.

OBJECTIVES

Therefore, we aimed to firstly review daily-life studies that assessed intensive longitudinal device-based (e.g., electronic smartphone diaries and accelerometry) and real-time PA-AWB data, secondly to develop and apply a quality assessment tool applicable to those studies, and thirdly to discuss findings and draw implications for research and practice.

METHODS

To this end, the literature was searched in three databases (Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus) up to November 2022. The systematic review followed the PRISMA guidelines and had been pre-registered (PROSPERO id: CRD42021277327). A modified quality assessment tool was developed to illustrate the risk of bias of included studies.

RESULTS

The review of findings showed that, in general, already short PA bouts in everyday life, which clearly differ from structured exercise sessions, are positively associated with AWB. In particular, feelings of energy relate to incidental (non-exercise and unstructured) activity, and PA-AWB associations depend on population characteristics. The quality assessment revealed overall moderate study quality; however, the methods applied were largely heterogeneous between investigations. Overall, the reviewed evidence on PA-AWB associations in everyday life is ambiguous; for example, no clear patterns of directions and strengths of PA-AWB relationships depending on PA and AWB components (such as intensity, emotions, affect, mood) emerged.

CONCLUSIONS

The reviewed evidence can fuel discussions on whether the World Health Organization's notion "every move counts" may be extended to everyday life AWB. Concurrently, the PA-AWB relationship findings endorse prominent theories highlighting the critical role of AWB in everyday PA engagement and maintenance. However, the review also clearly highlights the need to advance and harmonize methodological approaches for more fine-grained investigations on which specific PA/AWB characteristics, contextual factors, and biological determinants underly PA-AWB associations in everyday life. This will enable the field to tackle pressing challenges such as the issue of causality of PA-AWB associations, which will help to shape and refine existing theories to ultimately predict and improve health behavior, thereby feeding into precision medicine approaches.

Momentary within-subject associations of affective states and physical behavior are moderated by weather conditions in real life: an ambulatory assessment study

BACKGROUND

Physical behavior (PB) is a key lifestyle factor in regulating and preventing diseases across the lifespan. Researchers identified affective, cognitive, and contextual factors like weather conditions, as significant contributors in determining if individuals are physically active. However, there is scarce empirical evidence about potential associations between PB and affective states influenced by weather conditions in daily life. Therefore, we explored if weather conditions moderated the within-subject association between momentary affective states and subsequent PB.

METHODS

Utilizing ambulatory assessment, 79 participants completed electronic diaries about their affective states (i.e., valence, energetic arousal, and calmness) up to six times a day over five days, and their PB (i.e., physical activity and sedentariness) was simultaneously recorded via accelerometers. Weather conditions (i.e., temperature and precipitation) recorded near participants' locations served as moderators in the multilevel analyses.

RESULTS

We confirmed earlier findings associating affective states with PB. Increased valence and energetic arousal were positively associated with physical activity (β = 0.007; p < .001), whereas calmness predicted lower levels of physical activity (β = -0.006; p < .001). Higher levels of calmness showed a positive association with sedentary behavior (β = 0.054; p = .003). In addition, we revealed a significant positive association between temperature, as a momentary weather condition, and physical activity (β = 0.025; p = .015). Furthermore, we showed that the association of affective states and physical activity was moderated by temperature. Higher temperatures enhanced the positive effects of valence on physical activity (β = .001, p = .023) and attenuated the negative effects of calmness on physical activity (β = .001, p = .021). Moreover, higher temperatures enhanced the positive effects of valence on reduced sedentary behavior (β = -0.011, p = .043).

CONCLUSIONS

Temperature alterations appeared to have an impact on subsequent physical activity. Furthermore, temperature alterations moderated the influence of affective states on conducted physical activity. This might offer the opportunity for just-in-time adaptive interventions to intervene in individually appropriate environmental conditions for promoting physical activity.

Validation of an open-source ambulatory assessment system in support of replicable activity studies

Purpose: Inertial-based trackers have become a common tool in data capture for ambulatory studies that aim at characterizing physical activity. Many systems that perform remote recording of accelerometer data use commercial trackers and black-box aggregation algorithms, often resulting in data that are locked into proprietary formats and metrics that make later replication or comparison difficult.

Methods: The primary purpose of this manuscript is to validate an open-source ambulatory assessment system that consists of hardware devices, algorithms, and software components of our approach. We report on two validation experiments, one lab-based treadmill study on a convenience sample of 16 volunteers and one ’in vivo’ study with 28 volunteers suffering from diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

Results: A comparison between data from ActiGraph GT9X trackers and our proposed system reveals that the original inertial sensor signals at the wrist strongly correlate (Pearson correlation coefficients for raw inertial sensor signals of 0.97 in the controlled treadmill-walking setting) and that estimated steps from an open-source wrist-based detection approach correlate with the hip-worn ActiGraph output (average Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.81 for minute-wise comparisons of detected steps) in day-long ambulatory data.

Conclusion: Recording inertial sensor data in a standardized form and relying on open-source algorithms on these data form a promising methodology that ensures that datasets can be replicated or enriched long after the wearable trackers have been decommissioned.

Psychological Factors Predicting Sedentary Behavior of Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study in Brazil

This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the psychological factors that might predict the sedentary behavior of 654 older adults from the South Region of Brazil. The participants were evaluated by the International Physical Activity Questionnaire; Mini-Mental State Exam; Geriatric Anxiety Scale; and the scales Geriatric Depression, Purpose in Life, Perceived Stress, Rosenberg Self-Esteem, and Satisfaction with Life. Data analysis was conducted through Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis (p < .05). No significant (p > .05) correlation was found between the sedentary behavior variables with self-esteem. Multiple regression analysis revealed that psychological variables explained 6% of the variance of sitting time during the week (R2 = .06; F = 11.546; p < .01). Depression showed a positive prediction (β = −0.10; p = .040), while life satisfaction (β = −0.16; p = .001) and purpose in life (β = −0.10; p = .026) showed negative prediction. Psychological variables predicted only 3% of the variance of sitting time during the weekend (R2 = .03; F = 5.629; p < .01), showing that life satisfaction had significant (p = .007) and negative (β = −0.13) association. Life satisfaction and purpose in life can be considered protector factors to sedentary behavior, while depression is a potentiating factor.

Smartphone-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment of Well-Being: A Systematic Review and Recommendations for Future Studies

Feelings of well-being and happiness fluctuate over time and contexts. Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) studies can capture fluctuations in momentary behavior, and experiences by assessing these multiple times per day. Traditionally, EMA was performed using pen and paper. Recently, due to technological advances EMA studies can be conducted more easily with smartphones, a device ubiquitous in our society. The goal of this review was to evaluate the literature on smartphone-based EMA in well-being research in healthy subjects. The systematic review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Searching PubMed and Web of Science, we identified 53 studies using smartphone-based EMA of well-being. Studies were heterogeneous in designs, context, and measures. The average study duration was 12.8 days, with well-being assessed 2-12 times per day. Half of the studies included objective data (e.g. location). Only 47.2% reported compliance, indicating a mean of 71.6%. Well-being fluctuated daily and weekly, with higher well-being in evenings and weekends. These fluctuations disappeared when location and activity were accounted for. On average, being in nature and physical activity relates to higher well-being. Working relates to lower well-being, but workplace and company do influence well-being. The important advantages of using smartphones instead of other devices to collect EMAs are the easier data collection and flexible designs. Smartphone-based EMA reach far larger maximum sample sizes and more easily add objective data to their designs than palm-top/PDA studies. Smartphone-based EMA research is feasible to gain insight in well-being fluctuations and its determinants and offers the opportunity for parallel objective data collection. Most studies currently focus on group comparisons, while studies on individual differences in well-being patterns and fluctuations are lacking. We provide recommendations for future smartphone-based EMA research regarding measures, objective data and analyses.