Evaluation of the Get Active Questionnaire in Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Background: Physical activity screening prior to starting a physical activity program is important to identify if there are any underlying health conditions. However, many older adults do not complete such assessments prior to beginning their physical activity program. This project compared the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology’s newly developed Get Active Questionnaire (GAQ) to a standardized exercise stress test in terms of screening out versus screening in false positive GAQ tests. Methods: A convenience sample of community-dwelling adults (male n=58, female n=54) aged 75 ±7 years from London, Ontario was used. Participants completed a physical exam and physical activity screening session (i.e. stress test and GAQ) at a research laboratory which routinely conducts community-based referrals. One week after the initial visit, participants returned to the study site, completed the GAQ and were asked questions about their perceptions of physical activity screening by a research assistant. Results: The GAQ ‘screened in’ participants, but it did not provide the same precision of ‘screening out’ at-risk individuals as an exercise stress test; the GAQ reduced false positives versus the stress test, yet there was a large proportion of high false negative results reported. Conclusions: The GAQ shows promise in physical activity screening in older adults to engage in exercise safely. However, the lack of precision in physical activity screening out at-risk populations requires further evaluation. Questionnaires like the GAQ should be evaluated in a larger study population at various time points to further assess the validity and reliability of physical activity screening tools.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author