Purpose: Physical activity (PA) during pregnancy confers significant beneficial psychological and physiological health outcomes (Clapp, 2000). Unfortunately, most pregnant women do not obtain sufficient PA to experience these benefits. Because walking is the preferred method of obtaining physical activity during pregnancy, interventions to maintain or increase walking during pregnancy are needed. The purpose of this study is to determine the validity of the Yamax SW-200 DigiWalker Stepcounter for use with pregnant women. The SW-200 has demonstrated validity with populations ranging from school-age children to elderly nursing home residents, but has not been studied with pregnant women. Unique body changes occurring during pregnancy may effect the validity of the SW-200 as a measure of walking. Subjects: Ten women, 18 years and over, between 16 and 34 weeks of pregnancy, with no activity restrictions, will be recruited from a prenatal clinic serving low-income minority women. Methods: Four SW-200s are placed on the subject’s waist, one each over the left and right hips (recommended placement for obese persons), and midway between the right and left hips and the umbilicus (recommended placement for non-obese persons). The subject walks a 200-meter course 4 times, during which the subject and the investigator independently count the subject’s steps using a hand tally counter. At the end of each walk, the SW-200 and hand tally counter data is collected, and the instruments reset. Data Analyses: Analyses of the agreement between the two hand tally counts, and between each SW-200 reading and each hand tally count for each 200-meter walk will be done. Conclusions: Identifying an objective and valid measure of walking by pregnant women is a necessary first step in our program of research to design and conduct a randomized clinical trial of an intervention to maintain or increase walking during pregnancy
Session #1216 - Poster Session II
The 29th Annual MNRS Research Conference (April 1-4, 2005)