Emerging Technologies to Promote and Evaluate Physical Activity: Cutting-Edge Research and Future Directions

Physical activity (PA) promotion and measurement efforts are achieving greater precision, ease of use, and scope by incorporating emerging technologies. This is significant for PA promotion because more precise measurement allows investigators to better understand where, when, and how PA occurs, thus enabling more effective targeting of particular behavior settings. Emerging technologies associated with measuring and evaluating PA are noteworthy because they can: (1) greatly increase external validity of measures and findings through ease of use and transferability; (2) significantly increase the ability to analyze patterns; (3) improve the ongoing, systematic collection and analysis of public health surveillance due to real-time capabilities; and (4) address the need for research about the cyber infrastructure required to cope with big data (multiple streams, aggregation, visualization, etc.). This special issue brings together a collection of the latest innovations and research on the application of technology to promote and measure PA, ranging from new video games aimed at children to measurement programs targeted at obese adults. The first eight articles present emerging methodologies used to increase measurement specificity with regard to PA, the built environment, and geolocation. Combining multiple methodolo

[1]  Scott Duncan,et al.  Dynamic Accuracy of GPS Receivers for Use in Health Research: A Novel Method to Assess GPS Accuracy in Real-World Settings , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[2]  Jasper Schipperijn,et al.  Developing Suitable Buffers to Capture Transport Cycling Behavior , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[3]  D. Gill,et al.  A Hybrid Online Intervention for Reducing Sedentary Behavior in Obese Women , 2013, Front. Public Health.

[4]  Deepti Adlakha,et al.  Use of Emerging Technologies to Assess Differences in Outdoor Physical Activity in St. Louis, Missouri , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[5]  Brian E. Saelens,et al.  Emerging Technologies for Assessing Physical Activity Behaviors in Space and Time , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[6]  Gert R. G. Lanckriet,et al.  Identifying Active Travel Behaviors in Challenging Environments Using GPS, Accelerometers, and Machine Learning Algorithms , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[7]  Bin Bo,et al.  Development of a Smartphone Application to Measure Physical Activity Using Sensor-Assisted Self-Report , 2013, Front. Public Health.

[8]  Jana A. Hirsch,et al.  Using MapMyFitness to Place Physical Activity into Neighborhood Context , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[9]  C. Vandelanotte,et al.  Do Personally Tailored Videos in a Web-Based Physical Activity Intervention Lead to Higher Attention and Recall? – An Eye-Tracking Study , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[10]  Jacqueline Kerr,et al.  Context-Specific Outdoor Time and Physical Activity among School-Children Across Gender and Age: Using Accelerometers and GPS to Advance Methods , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[11]  Dan J. Graham.  Frontiers Commentary: The HEART Mobile Phone Trial: The Partial Mediating Effects of Self-Efficacy on Physical Activity among Cardiac Patients , 2016, Front. Public Health.

[12]  Philip J. Morgan,et al.  Development and Implementation of a Smartphone Application to Promote Physical Activity and Reduce Screen-Time in Adolescent Boys , 2014, Front. Public Health.

[13]  Shaun Bangay,et al.  Active Gaming as a Mechanism to Promote Physical Activity and Fundamental Movement Skill in Children , 2013, Front. Public Health.

[14]  Mario Schootman,et al.  The Built Environment Predicts Observed Physical Activity , 2014, Front. Public Health.