Subjective Assessments of Physical Activity in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Abstract

The aim of this three-paper dissertation is to examine the measurement properties of available subjective physical activity assessments in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in order to aid clinicians and researchers in making sound clinical judgement by systematically reviewing available evidence and then examining the validity of a widely used physical activity assessment tool in COPD. This dissertation also provides researchers with a new valid and reliable tool that can be used for quality assessment of validation studies and that can be used to improve the rigor of systematic reviews in observational studies. Within this dissertation, there are three independent studies. The first study describes the development and initial validation of a tool for quality assessment of validity studies. The second study is built on Study 1, where it utilizes the newly developed tool from study 1 to systematically review the reliability and validity of various subjective physical activity assessments in adults with COPD. The final study then investigates the construct validity of a widely used national physical activity surveillance tool - the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire, in older adults with COPD.