Table 1.

Glossary of terms.

Term	Definition
24-h activity cycle	Activities conducted over a 24-h period including, sleep, sedentary behavior, light-intensity physical activity, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.
Accuracy (Validity)	Deviation of a measure from its true value, including systematic (constant bias) and random error (variable) components.
Arterial stiffness	Fundamental mechanical behavior or rigidity of the material properties of the artery wall, determined by both structural and functional components.
Biological plausibility	Proposal of a causal association (or relationship between a cause and outcome) that is consistent with existing biological and medical knowledge.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD)	A general term for pathologies affecting the heart or blood vessels, including cerebrovascular disease, myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease, and peripheral artery disease.
Exercise	A subset of physical activity that is planned, structured, and repetitive.
Ecological validity	The degree to which results obtained from research or experimentation are representative of conditions in the wider world.
Endothelial function	The ability of the endothelium to adequately perform its physiological roles in maintaining homeostasis.
External validity	The degree to which causal relationships can be generalized to different measures, persons, settings, and times.
Intermediate outcome	A surrogate measure (e.g., pulse wave velocity) used to measure the effect of a treatment that may correlated with a real clinical endpoint (e.g., cardiovascular disease).
Internal validity	Degree to which a study establishes the cause-and-effect relationship between the treatment and the observed outcome.
Metabolic equivalent (MET)	Unit used to describe the absolute intensity of physical activity. A ratio of your working metabolic rate relative to your resting metabolic rate.
Physical activity	Any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that requires energy expenditure.
Physical inactivity	An insufficient level of moderate-vigorous physical activity level to meet present physical activity recommendations.
Policy	A course or principle of action adopted or proposed by an organization or individual.
Precision (Reliability)	Dispersion of a measurement or degree to which a measure contained on one occasion is repeated on a second occasion, including intra-rater (test-retest) and inter-rater components.
Randomized controlled trial (RCT)	People are randomly assigned to two (or more) groups, typically including one control and one or more experimental groups.
Sedentary behavior (SB)	Any waking behavior characterized by an energy expenditure ≤ 1.5 METs, while in a sitting, reclining or lying posture.
Translation	The use of scientific evidence by decision makers to inform and generating health policy.