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Sitting is a sedentary behavior and has been linked to all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality and to decreased life expectancy; 3 hours per day of sitting leads to a life expectancy decrease of 2 years (1–3). Sitting is distinct from a lack of recreational or nonrecreational physical activity (PA), and these behaviors have differing demographic determinants (4). Furthermore, these distinct behaviors may affect health outcomes via alternative biological mechanisms (5). This research has given rise to the “inactivity physiology paradigm,” or that “sitting too much is not the same as lack of exercise, and as such, has its own unique metabolic consequences” such as decreased lipoprotein lipase activity in skeletal muscles in the legs (5). People who exercise regularly but are still sedentary for several hours a day may have a risk of adverse health outcomes that is higher than would be expected given their overall PA levels, although recent findings in the literature are mixed (6).

A common practice is to use a broad definition of sedentary, although specific definitions are needed (7,8); this investigation thus focused on sitting time. Measured estimates in New York City (NYC) have not been previously published and are of interest, given the differences in PA levels between NYC and US adults (9). In a report released by the NYC Health Department, adult New Yorkers were 3 times as likely as adults nationwide to meet PA recommendations (29% versus 11%) (9). Previous surveys have also assessed sitting time by using 1 or 2 questions on weekdays versus weekends (10) or up to 21 questions to capture specific domains of sitting time (11). However, these prior question sets may not adequately address sitting time in a single day or may be too long to administer at the population level. Recall would likely be improved if the single day were divided into smaller periods.

We used 2 questions derived from 1 previously standardized question, dividing a single day into daytime and evening sitting times to improve recall and estimation. The objectives of this analysis were to describe self-reported sitting time and accelerometer-measured sedentary time in a diverse, urban population and to test the validity of a 2-question method of self-reported sitting time that allowed for discrete periods of recall.

The NYC Health Department conducted the Physical Activity and Transit (PAT) Survey, a cross-sectional, assessment of PA and transit behaviors in NYC adults. The PAT Survey was a random-digit–dial telephone survey designed to provide estimates of PA at the city, borough (county), and subgroup (eg, race/ethnicity) levels. An overlapping landline and cellular telephone sample frame to contact adults in residential households in NYC — with disproportionate, equal-sized samples from the 5 boroughs — was used, and areas with higher levels of obesity were oversampled. The first wave of interviews was conducted from September through November 2010 (n = 1,323); the second wave was conducted from March through November 2011 (n = 2,488; N = 3,811). The PAT Survey and device portion have been described previously (9,12,13). The institutional review board of the NYC Health Department approved this study as human subjects research.

Seventy percent of respondents were aged 25 to 64 years, more than half were female, nearly half were black or Hispanic, and almost 40% had an income of less than 200% of the FPL and were foreign-born (Table 1). The subset of participants who wore the accelerometer was similar to the overall sample, although they were slightly more likely to be US-born versus foreign-born.

In a representative sample of noninstitutionalized NYC adults, mean self-reported sitting time was 423 minutes per day (7.1 hours/d). Accelerometer-assessed sedentary time was 490 minutes per day (8.2 hours/d). These values are similar to national values of sedentary time assessed using accelerometer data from NHANES 2003–2004, which showed that the average US adult was sedentary for 7.7 hours per day (16). Mean sitting and sedentary time was highest in adults 65 years or older and in those who were college educated; accelerometer measurements demonstrated that these groups were sedentary for 8.9 hours per day.

Hispanics had the lowest values for self-reported sitting and measured sedentary time of all racial/ethnic groups. These results may reflect more physical occupations among Hispanics (17) but also point to the value of incorporating questions on both leisure-time and occupational activity when assessing PA levels in Hispanic populations. Similar results on occupation-related PA levels in Mexican Americans have been demonstrated in national data (18).

Although variations were seen in sitting times (lower values for Hispanics and those with lower educational levels and incomes), the amount of sitting time across all sociodemographic groups greatly exceeded the 3 hours per day associated with decreased life expectancy. Interventions for decreasing sitting time are needed to improve health outcomes across all groups. Worksite and home interventions should target all sociodemographic groups; however, the interventions should consider sex, age, and cultural and socioeconomic differences, as well as the time of day the sitting is occurring.

The main challenge of research on sedentary behavior is in defining it (7,8). This analysis focused on sitting time as a distinct sedentary behavior. We found that a 2-question method to assess sitting time demonstrated modest correlation with measurements of sedentary time by accelerometer (r = 0.32, P < .001), which is low compared with correlations of other self-reported and objective measures but similar to those observed in the PA literature (19). In a sample of Belgian adults aged 65 or older (n = 508), similar results were reported for validation of self-reported sitting time using a 21-question instrument and accelerometer-assessed sedentary time (11). The authors reported, in comparing self-report to measured values, a correlation of r = 0.30, a mean difference of 82 minutes per day, and wide LoA (−364 to 200 min/d) (11). The modest correlations in our and prior research may be because sitting is a subset of sedentary time, which includes a broader range of behaviors, such as reclining and lying down. This is reflected in the correlation data where the daytime correlation (r = 0.37) was larger than that observed for evening (r = 0.23) between self-report and accelerometer data.

The overall mean difference between self-report and accelerometer was 49 minutes per day, and wide LoA was observed in the Bland-Altman plot (−441 to 343 min/d). For population surveillance, cost and ease of administration are usually prioritized over more intensive and accurate measures, and questionnaires are often the only feasible method for assessing PA (20). Despite limitations to questionnaires for assessing PA accurately, they are useful in characterizing groups, providing rankings among subgroups, or both (21). Results from the plot corroborate this evidence and reinforce the notion that sitting time may be accurately assessed by self-report using the 2-question method for population surveillance but may be limited in accurately characterizing individual-level behavior.

NYC is among the most walkable cities in the nation. Recent analysis using an NYC-specific walkability scale that incorporated 5 equally-weighted components (residential density, intersection density, land use, subway stop density, and ratio of retail building floor area to retail land area) quantitatively illustrated the walkability of NYC; Manhattan in particular, was flagged as an area with high walkability (22). The geographic location of increased sitting time (ie, concentration in Manhattan) observed in this study is noteworthy and points to opportunities for intervention design. For example, given the high sitting times and favorable walking conditions in Manhattan, interventions that introduce breaks in sitting time with short walks are feasible. This finding highlights the potential for intervention through locating worksites in walkable neighborhoods in the United States and considering walkability in the design of new business districts. Similar intervention strategies could be implemented in other urban populations with comparable geographic concentrations of these characteristics.

In addition to promoting walking breaks among workers in walkable neighborhoods, other workplace interventions are being considered in NYC and elsewhere. A Cochrane review concluded that using a sit–stand desk with or without additional interventions such as information or counseling reduced sitting time by 113 minutes per workday; however, the quality of evidence was low, because the available studies had small numbers of participants and low-quality research design (23). Complementary to interventions in the workplace or during the day, strategies that target sitting time in the evening, such as encouraging movement during television watching, should be considered.

In NYC, promotion of stair use is also being used to provide opportunities for small bouts of physical activity throughout the day. The NYC Health Department has worked with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to open stairwells in many publicly owned worksite buildings, coupled with posting of stair prompt signage encouraging people to “Burn Calories, Not Electricity. Take the Stairs!” Use of this signage is associated with stair use among occupants of multiple NYC buildings (24,25).

One of the main strengths of this analysis was the assessment of behaviors and exploration of validity of self-reported sitting time in an urban and diverse sample of adults. The availability of accelerometer data was an additional strength; however, the accelerometer is not able to distinguish between different domains of sedentary time (26,27) and may not be as accurate a method for validating self-report of sitting time as a device that distinguishes between sitting and lying down. However, given the absence of a “gold standard” for measuring sitting time, the accelerometer-assessed sedentary time may be considered as a fair proxy (28). Accelerometer technology has advanced to produce devices that distinguish between standing and lying down, but such devices may not always function properly. For instance, we set the model we used for this investigation to estimate standing versus lying down; however, we found that the setting did not work. Measurement of sedentary behavior is still a nascent field (29), and careful consideration should be given to the best required method for the specific sedentary behavior and question under study (27). Therefore, the focus on sitting time specifically was an additional strength of this study. Also, it may be easier to report and recall one specific sedentary behavior than multiple sedentary behaviors under one inclusive definition.

This study had limitations. Validation of a 2-item versus 1-item question assessing sitting time would have been more appropriately assessed by comparison with each other; however, standards of practice for improving a single question from an established instrument were applied by using a previously validated single-item question and by breaking up the period of recall into 2 periods. Although data were weighted to be representative of the NYC adult population, the small sample sizes of some subgroups (eg, Asian) limited external validity of findings in these groups. Citywide results, however, may be generalizable to other urban areas with similar urban landscapes and opportunities for walking and active transport. Finally, to successfully quantify sitting time, it has been suggested to incorporate both measured data and context-specific information (28,30). We did not have this level of information available for this study, given that the PAT Survey was designed for citywide surveillance across multiple domains of PA and active transport.

The 2-question method to quantify sitting time is limited in quantifying behavior accurately at the individual level but may be valuable for population-level surveillance over time. For population surveillance, particularly in settings with limited resources for conducting health surveys, assessing the accuracy of single or dual-item questions for characterizing behaviors is critical. Opportunities to decrease sitting time in urban areas with high walkability are implicated. Our findings are key for health intervention and policy planning focused on improving sitting-related health outcomes, distinct from interventions promoting other recreational and nonrecreational physical activity, with potential generalizability to other urban, adult populations.