National physical activity surveillance: Users of wearable activity monitors as a potential data source
Open accessAbstract
The objective of this study was to assess usage patterns of wearable activity monitors among US adults and how user characteristics might influence physical activity estimates from this type of sample. We analyzed data on 3367 respondents to the 2015 HealthStyles survey, an annual consumer mail panel survey conducted on a nationwide sample. Approximately 1 in 8 respondents (12.5%) reported currently using a wearable activity monitor. Current use varied by sex, age, and education level. Use increased with physical activity level from 4.3% for inactive adults to 17.4% for active adults. Overall, 49.9% of all adults met the aerobic physical activity guideline, while this prevalence was 69.5% among current activity monitor users. Our findings suggest that current users of wearable activity monitors are not representative of the overall US population. Estimates of physical activity levels using data from wearable activity monitors users may be an overestimate and therefore data from users alone may have a limited role in physical activity surveillance.
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A study from the HealthStyles 2015 survey in the US found that wearable use decreased with advancing age, lower levels of education, and in rural areas.
“For instance, a study from the HealthStyles 2015 survey in the US found that wearable use decreased with advancing age, lower levels of education, and in rural areas (Omura et al., 2017).”
From Sociodemographics and Digital Health Literacy in Using Wearables for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention: Cross-Sectional Nationwide Survey in Germany (2025) · cites this paper as Omura et al., 2017
The Methods identify HealthStyles 2015 as the US survey, and the Results report that current wearable use increased with decreasing age and increasing education. The paper assessed metro versus nonmetro status, but the available Results passage does not say that wearable use was lower in rural or nonmetro areas; its metro comparison concerns meeting physical activity guidelines, not wearable use. No page numbers are provided in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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Cites
The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans
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- Authors
- Omura, J. D., Carlson, S. A., Paul, P., Watson, K. B., & Fulton, J. E.
- Affiliations
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US)
- Corresponding author
- Omura, John D.
- Venue
- Preventive Medicine Reports
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-03
- Volume
- 5
- Pages
- 124-126
- ISSN
- 2211-3355 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5234694
- OpenAlex
- W2543107203
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 1.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Preventive Medicine Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Physical Activity and Health
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Context-Aware Activity Recognition Systems
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Keywords
- wearable activity trackers, physical activity surveillance, physical activity prevalence, self-reported physical activity, sample representativeness, consumer panel data
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