Validity and precision of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire for climacteric women using computational intelligence techniques.

This study aimed to evaluate the validity and precision of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) for climacteric women using computational intelligence techniques. The instrument was applied to 873 women aged between 40 and 65 years. Considering the proposal to regroup the set of data related to the level of physical activity of climacteric women using the IPAQ, we used 2 algorithms: Kohonen and k-means, and, to evaluate the validity of these clusters, 3 indexes were used: Silhouette, PBM and Dunn. The questionnaire was tested for validity (factor analysis) and precision (Cronbach's alpha). The Random Forests technique was used to assess the importance of the variables that make up the IPAQ. To classify these variables, we used 3 algorithms: Suport Vector Machine, Artificial Neural Network and Decision Tree. The results of the tests to evaluate the clusters suggested that what is recommended for IPAQ, when applied to climacteric women, is to categorize the results into two groups. The factor analysis resulted in three factors, with factor 1 being composed of variables 3 to 6; factor 2 for variables 7 and 8; and factor 3 for variables 1 and 2. Regarding the reliability estimate, the results of the standardized Cronbach's alpha test showed values between 0.63 to 0.85, being considered acceptable for the construction of the construct. In the test of importance of the variables that make up the instrument, the results showed that variables 1 and 8 presented a lesser degree of importance and by the analysis of Accuracy, Recall, Precision and area under the ROC curve, there was no variation when the results were analyzed with all IPAQ variables but variables 1 and 8. Through this analysis, we concluded that the IPAQ, short version, has adequate measurement properties for the investigated population.

Abdominal obesity and association with sociodemographic, behavioral and clinical data in climacteric women assisted in primary care.

This study aims to investigate the prevalence and factors associated with abdominal obesity in climacteric women assisted at Family Health Strategy units of the city of Montes Claros, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It is a cross-sectional analytical study. The women were selected by probabilistic sampling from August 2014 to August 2015. A questionnaire containing information referring to sociodemographic and economic characteristics, behavioral characteristics and clinical data was used. To estimate abdominal obesity, the measure of circumference ≥ 88 cm was considered. To analyze the association between abdominal obesity and the independent variables, a bivariate analysis was performed by means of Pearson's chi-square test (p≤0.25). Subsequently, a multiple Poisson regression analysis with robust variance was performed, through which prevalence ratios with level of significance of 5% (p<0.05) were obtained. A total of 805 women were evaluated, aged 40 to 65 years, and the prevalence of women with abdominal obesity was 62.4%. The mean and median of abdominal circumference were 93.0 cm. The associated variables were being sedentary (PR = 1.44) or irregularly active (PR = 1.39), presenting altered total cholesterol (PR = 1.21), and being hypertensive (PR = 1.31). The abdominal obesity in climacteric women was associated with physical inactivity, total cholesterol and arterial hypertension. The measurement of abdominal circumference must be valued and adopted in the routine of professionals who work in Primary Care.