This is the first study in an African country to explore the cultural adaptation and translation of the IPAQ-LF, and its findings selleck chemical demonstrated the feasibility of using the IPAQ-LF to reliably collect PA data in a diverse segment of the Nigerian population. In the Africa region, the importance of a valid and established PA scale such as the modified IPAQ-LF is not only important to monitoring the domain in which activity is performed, but also very critical to understanding studies of ecological models of health behaviours

that emphasise the importance of multiple levels of influence on health behaviours including PA.18 42 In Nigeria, emerging evidence from studies using ecological models indicate that favourable built environmental attributes are promising for improving total and moderate-to-vigorous PA and controlling obesity among adults.26 43–45 However, built environment characteristics are expected to be strongly related to specific PA types rather than overall PA.46 47 For example, different environmental variables can be related to walking for leisure or transportation and to moderate PA for household, occupation, recreation or transportation. Thus, a study of adaptation of the IPAQ-LF is very important to understanding the domain-specific nature of ecological model research in the African region. One additional strength was the exploration

of PA patterns by gender, educational level and employment status, the findings of which were consistent with general hypothesis on social patterns of inactivity in low-income countries.20 48 However, the findings of

this study should be interpreted in the light of some important limitations. Direct comparison of our validity findings with previous studies should be made with caution, because unlike in our study, the accelerometer or PA diary were utilised as a common objective criterion standard to validate the IPAQ in the majority of the studies.5 7 8 24 30 33 39 Thus, examining the construct validity through the relationships of PA with BMI and resting blood pressure was an important limitation of our study. The choice and availability of appropriate criterion measures are particular issues of concern for the validation of PA questionnaires in low-income countries of Africa.5 49 50 Despite these issues, the validity coefficients in our study were remarkably similar to those reported in other studies,5 7 8 24 30 33 39 and the consistency of items on IPAQ with variables GSK-3 known to be related to PA, such as BMI, blood pressure, heart rate, indicators of lipid and glucose metabolism and fitness index have previously been used as important construct validity measures.7 10 21 24 Another limitation of the study is the use of non-probability sampling technique. The study finding may have limited generalisability to other samples of Nigerians that have different characteristics from this sample.