ABSTRACT
Physical activity (PA) in adolescence may contribute to the development of healthy adult lifestyles, helping reduce chronic disease incidence. However, research in PA associated with health outcomes is normally assessed by self-reported measures, which inevitably leads to misclassification. Therefore, adequate and comprehensive PA assessment techniques are needed to evaluate relationships between PA and indicators of health status, fitness and behaviour. PA tends to decrease, on average, with age. This decline in PA with age may be influenced by differences between overweight and normal-weight adolescents to recall information. Overweight and obese adults tend to overestimate involvement in PA compared to normal weight adults (Lee et al., 1993). Differences between actual and reported involvement PA in normal weight and obese/overweight youth are less well documented, though McMurray et al. (2008) reported that overweight and obese girls aged 11–14 years were also more likely to overestimate involvement in moderate-to-vigorous PA. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the concordance between self-reported and objective estimates of activity energy expenditure (AEE) among female adolescents by weight status (normal weight and overweight/obese).
