Development and Testing of an Integrated Score for Physical Behaviors.

PURPOSE: Interest in a variety of physical behaviors (e.g., exercise, sitting time, sleep) in relation to health outcomes creates a need for new statistical approaches to analyze the joint effects of these distinct but inter-related physical behaviors. We developed and tested an integrated physical behavior score (PBS).

METHODS: NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study participants (N=163,016) completed a questionnaire (2004-2006) asking about time spent in five exercise and non-exercise physical activities, two sedentary behaviors (television and non-television), and sleep. In half of the sample, we used shape constrained additive regression to model the relationship between each behavior and survival. Maximum logit scores from each of the eight behavior-survival functions were summed to produce a PBS that was proportionally rescaled to range from 0-100. We examined predictive validity of the PBS in the other half-sample using Cox Proportional Hazards models after adjustment for covariates for all-cause and cause-specific mortality.

RESULTS: In the testing sample, over an average of 6.6y of follow-up, 8,732 deaths occurred. We found a strong graded decline in risk of all-cause mortality across quintiles of PBS (Q5 vs Q1 hazard ratio [95%CI] = 0.53 [0.49, 0.57]). Risk estimates for the PBS were higher than any of the components in isolation. Results were similar but stronger for cardiovascular disease (Q5 vs Q1 = 0.42 [0.39, 0.48]) and other mortality (Q5 vs Q1 = 0.42 [0.36, 0.48]). The relationship between PBS and mortality was observed in stratified analyses by median age, sex, BMI and health status.

CONCLUSIONS: We developed a novel statistical method generated a composite physical behavior that is predictive of mortality outcomes. Future research is needed to test this approach in an independent sample.