Assessing the validity of a physical activity questionnaire developed for parents of preschool children in Mexico

To assess the validity of a questionnaire developed for parents of preschool children to know their physical activity (pa) status,we compared the questionnaire results with the measures of accelerometer for children's activities. thirty-five preschoolers who wore the accelerometer for at least 10 hours daily on 3 weekdays and one weekend day were included in the analyses. time spent in activities of varied intensity was calculated by applying 15-second actigraph count cutoffs (acc). parents' perceptions of their children's pa were associated with the percentage of vigorous and moderate physical activity recorded with acc at r=0.62 (p=0.0001). an association was shown between the percentage of a child's time spent in vigorous physical activity,as reported by parents,with that measured by acc at r=0.53 (p=0.001). results of this study suggest that the designed questionnaire might be a useful tool for assessing children's activity while,additionally,it warrants further investigation on larger samples of children.