Frequency, intensity and duration of activity bouts in children

Accelerometers are increasingly used to assess physical activity as they are objective, unobtrusive and measure movement directly. However, until recently the memory capacity has limited the assessment of habitual activity patterns to a minute-by-minute resolution. As children’s activity is typically sporadic – consisting of frequent short bouts of activity – (Bailey et al., 1995; Berman et al., 1998) – this has limited understanding of the pattern of activity.