TABLE 2.

Considerations and Questions to Assess When Deciding on Using Wearable Physical Activity (PA) Trackers in Public Health Research

Considerations	Questions to Ask
Population	What is the age of your study population? What is the technical ability level of your population?
PA outcomes	Is PA your primary or secondary outcome? If it is a primary outcome, there will be a greater need to have high levels of accuracy and flexibility with how the data are presented.
Intervention or assessment?	Are you using the device to assess PA or as an intervention device? If using for assessment, you should choose a device that is nonreactive (e.g., does not display activity to the participant on the device, which may influence PA levels).
Budget	How much can you afford to spend on devices, taking in consideration lost devices as well?
Data accuracy	What published research has demonstrated the validity and reliability of the device? What is the frequency of missing data? Are the device-specific collected measures and/or cut points appropriate for your research interests?
Place of wear	Will your participants tolerate wearing a device on their arm, waist, or wrist?
Waterproof	Do you need the device to be worn at all times? Would you like to be able to track swimming activities?
Sleep	Are you interested in objectively tracking sleep?
Data display	Do you want participants to be able to see their data on the device? Do you want to see their data after syncing to a computer or mobile phone? Do you want to prevent participants from seeing their data? Are you comfortable with participants viewing data through the app or website provided by the device vendor?
Application Programming Interface (API)	Do you need to capture, store, and/or display data to a local data collection system or website rather than through the vendor-provided app or website? How will you collect and prepare the data for analysis? Is the API publically available and well-documented?
Customer service and return policy	What is the refund policy if devices are lost or malfunctioning? What support is available from customer service to resolve technical issues?