Debate. How should steps per day be reported--a proposal using data from Africa

Recently, three reviews were published in the IJBNPA which address the need to update accumulating evidence, relating to step-based recommendations, with evidence-based physical activity guidelines [1-3]. What is apparent in the reviews is the lack of pedometry data from Developing Countries, specifically Africa. The primary reason for the absence of African data in the reviews is simply the dearth of reported African data. However, the published data that is available [4,5] could not be included [2] because of the reporting format in the original papers. The unadjusted step data was reported either as mean(sd) by age quartile [4] or mean(sd) by step quartile [5] and adolescent/adult and adult/elderly age categories overlapped substantially in the first and last quartiles, respectively. With regards to the reviews [1-3] a possible area of concern is that the reported prevalence statistics, especially for adults, do not appear to have been adjusted to standard populations, making comparison across moderate to large scale surveillance studies difficult. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to present the available step data from African samples such that the data can be used in future reviews and to encourage researchers especially from Developing Countries to report step data in a more standardised format.The methodology for the two cross sectional studies conducted in a rural African population [6-8] is described in detail elsewhere [4,5]. The age range is 14-96 years and the average daily step range is 1048-35534 steps [4,5]. The first smaller study (n = 121) conducted in 2003-2004 on females only, used the Yamax Digiwalker SW-401 pedometer [4]. The second larger study (n = 789) collected data from both sexes in 2005-2007 using the New Lifestyles NL-2000 pedometer [5].The suggested reporting format contains 8 step levels (< 2500, 2500-4999, 5000-7499, 7500-9999, 10000-12499, 12500-14999, 15000-17499, ≥17500) [9]. Unlike samples from Developed Countries which