UW–Madison researchers, including several with ties to the School of Education’s Department of Kinesiology, recently published a study on the effectiveness of activity trackers, including Fitbits, with JMIR Publications’ mHealth and uHealth.
Diana Dorn and Jessica Gorzelitz are both graduate students with the School of Education’s Department of Kinesiology, while Lisa Cadmus-Bertram, Kelli Koltyn and David Bell are faculty members with the department. Another author on the paper is Ronald Gangnon, who is a professor with the Department of Populational Health Sciences and the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics.
Their study focuses on activity trackers, including various models of the Fitbit, which are now ubiquitous in certain populations. The team hoped to provide understanding of the accuracy of this technology, suggesting that it is critical to the appropriate and productive use of wearables in health research.
The research team tested various trackers by monitoring the trackers as participants took part in eight activity types, including walking and running, both outdoors and indoors, swimming, a run embedded in walking bouts, elliptical use, and outdoor biking.
Although the researchers found that there was high levels of recognition of common activity, they discovered that the accuracy of measurement carried considerably by activity type and tracker model, and was poor for complex sets of activity.
JMIR mHealth and uHealth is a sister journal of JMIR, a leading eHealth journal. Read more about their study,”Automatic Identification of Physical Activity Type and Duration by Wearable Activity Trackers: A Validation Study,” here.