HHS HealthBeat (March 30, 2010)

What we do; what we say

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

What we say about being physically active might not match what we do.

Sandra Ham of the University of Chicago saw it when she compared survey data about physical activity with measurements based on devices called accelerometers, which kept track of how active people were.

"By self-report, more people met physical activity recommendations than they did when they were measured using accelerometers." (7 seconds)

Ham believes people guessed wrong about how much they did. She says, for instance, whites actually did less than the surveys said, and Mexican-Americans did more. She thinks whites overestimated their exercise time, and Mexican-Americans didn’t count all the time they spent doing hard work.

Ham based the paper in the American Journal of Public Health on research she did at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011