Module Aims 

This module aims to provide students with an understanding of the key principles of physical activity and fitness epidemiology in terms of measurement, determinants of variation, associations with health, and implications for public health. The module includes practical experience with wearables and smartphones which are now so ubiquitous in our lives that they feature in government plans for population health improvements.

Module Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module students should be able to: 

1. Define and describe physical activity, sedentary behaviour and fitness across their respective domains.   
2. Gain overview of different methods of measuring physical activity, sedentary behaviour and fitness. Understand different inference techniques for estimating behavioural phenotypes as exposures or outcomes.  
3. Understand what consumer wearables measure and how we turn that into useful variables for population science. Understand what techniques are available for harmonising measures of behaviour.
4. Describe and discuss different analytical approaches in activity, sedentary behaviour and fitness epidemiology and interpret associations with health outcomes.   
5. Understand the principles of descriptive epidemiology of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and fitness, including their relation to public health guidelines 
6. Describe the sociodemographic determinants of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and fitness 
7. Describe and discuss key issues in translating evidence in physical behaviour epidemiology to policy implementation for public health 

Pre-requisites

• Principles of Epidemiology
• Principles of Biostatistics
• Principles of Public Health

Teaching Strategy

A combination of lectures, facilitated classroom discussions, and applied workshops will be provided. The lectures will provide overviews of key principles, interlaced with classroom discussions. The students will be provided with recommended reading for each module component. The practical workshops will take a variety of forms including data collection on students themselves, group work involving data analysis and class-wide discussions on interpretation of findings. 

Assessment

Students will be randomly allocated to pairs and a research question. They will be provided with a dataset which they will analyse and interpret to answer the research question. They will choose a relevant article from the literature to compare their own results to and critically appraise. The pair will present this work on the last day of the module. This presentation forms the assessment for the module.   

Module Length

4 days