Built-in healthcare applications reveal step changes associated with temperature, transportation, and marital status among urban cities in Japan.

Abstract

Background: Walking is a fundamental daily activity representing health status and physical condition. The number of steps taken in a given time period is widely used in research areas such as aging, geriatrics, gerontology, public health, and preventive medicine. However, the underlying mechanisms of step counts are not well understood.

Objectives: To investigate daily step counts associated with temperature, transportation, and marital status.

Design: Time series analysis of daily steps using built-in healthcare applications on smartphones.

Setting: Government-designated, well-developed urban cities in Japan: Fukuoka, Kawasaki, Kobe, Kyoto, and Saitama.

Participants: Respondents totaled 622 40- to 79-year-olds, comprising 370 males and 252 females.

Measurements: The mean period of our retrospective data was 2,344 days.

Results: Seasonal-trend decomposition using loess was applied to time series steps. With the high coefficient of determination R²: 0.798, an absolute value function was fitted between temperature and the mean daily steps of the seasonal component. Furthermore, ordinary train usage in Saitama, Kawasaki, and Fukuoka was significantly greater than that in Kobe and Kyoto by 14.1 points (p=0.001). Moreover, married and divorced or bereaved males' mean daily step counts were significantly larger than those of females' by 1,832 (p=0.001) and 2,480 (p=0.001), respectively. By contrast, the difference in the mean daily step counts for unmarried males and females was only 100.

Conclusions: This study presents significant associations between mean daily steps and the factors of temperature, transportation, and marital status. These associations can alleviate biases in step research by area and season to facilitate better step count comparisons in many research fields.