Accelerometer-assessed outdoor physical activity is associated with meteorological conditions among older adults: Cross-sectional results from the OUTDOOR ACTIVE study

Birte Marie Albrecht; Imke Stalling; Carina Recke; Karin Bammann

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0228053

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 24, 2019
21 Nov 2019 Decision Letter - Joe Robert Nocera, Editor PONE-D-19-20850 Accelerometer-assessed outdoor physical activity is associated with meteorological conditions among older adults: cross-sectional results from the OUTDOOR ACTIVE study PLOS ONE Dear Mrs. Albrecht, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Overall the manuscript is well written however some key missing details within the methodology and results need to be addressed/added. The comments and suggestion would serve to make this much stronger paper We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jan 05 2020 11:59PM. 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The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: In this cross-sectional study, the authors examined the association between physical activity levels (indoor and outdoor) and meteorological conditions. Overall, the manuscript was very well written and clearly organized. The methodology was fairly sound, though I do have some questions. Comments by section: BACKGROUND: Lines 60-61: This sentence needs a reference. Lines 64-82: I understand what the authors are saying, but an example would be helpful here. For example, if PA was assessed during a period of pleasant weather, this may make it appear that individuals are much more active than they usually area (factoring in multiple weeks of mixed weather). METHODS: Lines 106-108: Why the max age limit of 75 years? Accelerometer assessment of activity: Lines 127-128: Non-wear time in older adults is typically set at 60 minutes (or 90 minutes for institutionalized older adults). Why was 30 minutes set? Also, the authors specify that a valid day was considered as 20 hours of wear (line 128). Were the participants were sleeping with the devices on? Please clarify. Normally, 10 hours is considered the cut-off for minimum wear time to equal a valid day. The authors state that the minimum was one day of wear time. How can you address intra-person variability in PA by climate with just 1 day of measurement? Please explain why activity level was classified based on mean daily CPM rather than CPM thresholds? RESULTS: Line 228 and in table 1: Include the mean # of valid days per person (with range) here and in table 2. Lines 244-247: Was the relationship between PA and age stronger in women or men - or no difference? DISCUSSION: Lines 311-314: What degree of substitution takes place? Do individuals engage in equal amounts of IPA when weather makes OPA untenable (or vice versa)? Or is there magnitude of change? (I.e. said individual engages in half the IPA that they would have if weather was nicer and they went outside?) ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228053.r001
Revision 1
19 Dec 2019 Author Response Dear Dr. Nocera, we are sending the revised manuscript Accelerometer-assessed outdoor physical activity is associated with meteorological conditions among older adults: cross-sectional results from the OUTDOOR ACTIVE study. We feel that the paper greatly improved by the changes requested by the reviewer and are very grateful for the comments. Please find below a point-by-point reply to the comments. Kind regards Birte Albrecht, also on behalf of the co-authors. Reviewer 1: In this cross-sectional study, the authors examined the association between physical activity levels (indoor and outdoor) and meteorological conditions. Overall, the manuscript was very well written and clearly organized. The methodology was fairly sound, though I do have some questions. Comments by section: BACKGROUND: Lines 60-61: This sentence needs a reference. Reply: All three sentences refered to the same reference. We changed the text to clarify this (lines 59-63). Lines 64-82: I understand what the authors are saying, but an example would be helpful here. For example, if PA was assessed during a period of pleasant weather, this may make it appear that individuals are much more active than they usually area (factoring in multiple weeks of mixed weather). Reply: An example was added in lines 80-83. METHODS: Lines 106-108: Why the max age limit of 75 years? Reply: The main research question of the OUTDOOR ACTIVE study focuses on PA behaviour changes around retirement, hence the narrow age range. Accelerometer assessment of activity: Lines 127-128: Non-wear time in older adults is typically set at 60 minutes (or 90 minutes for institutionalized older adults). Why was 30 minutes set? Also, the authors specify that a valid day was considered as 20 hours of wear (line 128). Were the participants were sleeping with the devices on? Please clarify. Normally, 10 hours is considered the cut-off for minimum wear time to equal a valid day. Reply: Non-wear time is usually set at 60 minutes for hip-worn accelerometers. In our study, the accelerometers were worn at the wrist. There are currently no consistent recommendations for this location. A reduction of the non-wear time cut-off may result in an underestimation of sedentary behaviour. We only analysed physical activity and not sedentary behaviour. Therefore, non-wear time set at 30 minutes does not influence the amount of physical activity but rather reduces the risk of type II errors (Knaier 2019). The participants were asked to wear the accelerometers day and night (24 h). This information was added in line 125. Using the 20 h cut-off only 4.8 % of the days were excluded from the analyses. The authors state that the minimum was one day of wear time. How can you address intra-person variability in PA by climate with just 1 day of measurement? Reply: The aim of this study was to examine the PA variability by weather rather than the intra-person variability of PA by weather. Therefore, we looked at PA on day-level and not on person-level. The median of accelerometer measurements per day was 13 (interquartile range: 8-17). Please explain why activity level was classified based on mean daily CPM rather than CPM thresholds? Reply: Accelerometer thresholds can lead to an under- or overestimation of MVPA as there is a wide variability in the physical functioning and fitness of older adults (Troiano, 2014, Rejeski et al. 2018). Moreover, from a technical view, the categorization of the data into intensities results in a loss of information. As our intention is to investigate total amount of PA, not PA intensities or adherence to PA guidelines, we choose to assess PA as mean daily CPM. RESULTS: Line 228 and in table 1: Include the mean # of valid days per person (with range) here and in table 2. Reply: The distribution of valid days per person was added in lines 230-231 and table 2. Since table 1 is not person-based we assumed that the reviewer meant only table 2. If this is not the case, please let us know. Lines 244-247: Was the relationship between PA and age stronger in women or men - or no difference? Reply: The negative relationship between PA and age was stronger in women (-36.4; 95%-CL: -44.4, -28.3) than in men (-21.2; 95%-CL: -28.6, -13.8), as stated in lines 247-249. DISCUSSION: Lines 311-314: What degree of substitution takes place? Do individuals engage in equal amounts of IPA when weather makes OPA untenable (or vice versa)? Or is there magnitude of change? (I.e. said individual engages in half the IPA that they would have if weather was nicer and they went outside?) Reply: We added a figure to the supplementary material to give more insight into the inverse relationship between OPA/ IPA and cloud cover (see S1 Fig). The text was changed to clarify that this is only one possible explanation (see lines 314-316). References Knaier R, Höchsmann C, Infanger D, Hinrichs T, Schmidt-Trucksäss A. Validation of automatic wear-time detection alorithms in a free-living setting of wrist-worn and hip-worn ActiGraph GT3X+. BMC Public Health. 2019;19:244. Rejeski WJ, Walkup MP, Fielding RA, King AC, Manini T, Marsh AP, McDermott M, Miller EY, Newman AB, Tudor-Locke C, Axtell RS, Miller ME. Evaluating accelerometry thresholds for detecting changes in levels of moderate physical activity and resulting major mobility disability. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2018;73(5):660-667. Troiano RP, McClain JJ, Brychta RJ et al. Evolution of accelerometer methods for physical activity research. Brit J Sports Med. 2014; 48:1019–1023. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228053.r002
7 Jan 2020 Decision Letter - Joe Robert Nocera, Editor Accelerometer-assessed outdoor physical activity is associated with meteorological conditions among older adults: cross-sectional results from the OUTDOOR ACTIVE study PONE-D-19-20850R1 Dear Dr. Albrecht, We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication. Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. With kind regards, Joe Robert Nocera Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228053.r003
Formally Accepted
14 Jan 2020 Acceptance Letter - Joe Robert Nocera, Editor PONE-D-19-20850R1 Accelerometer-assessed outdoor physical activity is associated with meteorological conditions among older adults: cross-sectional results from the OUTDOOR ACTIVE study Dear Dr. Albrecht: I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE. With kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Joe Robert Nocera Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228053.r004

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