Author: GAC-PAQ

Dr. Larouche delivered the following oral presentations at the 2025 CSEP conference in London, Ontario:

1. Larouche R, Rostami Haji Abadi M, Castillo D, Harper-Brown R, Delisle Nyström C, Jáuregui A, Oyeyemi AL, Baghestani A, Brazo-Sayavera J, Liu Y, Löf M, Loney T, Lundgren M, McRae R, Augusto Santos Silva D, Widyastari DA, Tremblay MS. (2025). Satisfaction with the new app-based Global Adolescent and Child Physical Activity Questionnaire (GAC-PAQ) in 13 low-, middle-, and high-income countries.
2. Campos-Garzon P, Koen L, Aubert S, Sarmiento OL, Tremblay MS, Larouche R. (2025). A global review of active transportation surveillance in children and adolescents using Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance’s Global Matrix 4.0 Data.

Dr. Larouche delivered a presentation about the Global Adolescent and Child Physical Activity Questionnaire project at Western University. The presentation was attended by over 60 graduate students and faculty members in public health, epidemiology, and biostatistics.

Dr. Larouche presented the abstract entitled “Introducing a global measure of outdoor time for young people: The Global Adolescent and Child Physical Activity Questionnaire (GAC-PAQ) project”. This abstract provides preliminary evidence about socio-demographic correlates of outdoor time across 12 participating countries. We also observed moderate convergent validity between child- and parent-reported outdoor time.

In this article, we report the content validation studies completed as part of the GAC-PAQ project. First, we completed a survey involving 62 experts in physical activity measurement and/or surveillance from 24 countries. Next, we completed cognitive interviews with 250 children and adolescents and one of their parents or guardians. We also discuss changes made to the questionnaire based on feedback from participants. 

Read it here: Larouche et al. (2025)

We systematically examined the reliability and validity of physical activity questionnaires, updating a review that was published in 2018. For the first time, content validation studies were systematically assessed based on the COSMIN guidelines, though quality of evidence remains low. No questionnaire achieved COSMIN benchmarks for both sufficient test-retest reliability and construct validity. We provided many recommendations for improving questionnaires. 

Read it here: Rostami Haji Abadi et al. (2025) 

Data collection has begun in Sweden, Mexico, Spain, Nigeria and Canada. We currently have data from over 400 children/adolescents and one of their parents/guardians. We anticipate that many other countries will begin their main study in the next few weeks.

Richard Larouche and Ryan Harper-Brown delivered an invited presentation about the development of the GAC-PAQ questionnaire and app for the Prentice Institute for Global Population and Economy. The recording of the presentation is available at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ak31pYqbE8

A section about the Global Adolescent and Children Physical Activity Questionnaire (GAC-PAQ) project was included in the World Health Organization (WHO) report entitled “Physical activity measurement and surveillance in youth: report of a scoping and planning meeting”. This report summarizes an expert meeting held at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland in May 2024 where Dr. Larouche was invited to present the project.

Link to the report: Physical activity measurement and surveillance in youth: report of a scoping and planning meeting, 8-10 May 2024

We are pleased to announce that our GAC-PAQ study protocol, “Development and validation of the Global Adolescent and Child Physical Activity Questionnaire (GAC-PAQ) in 14 countries: study protocol,” was published on BMJ Open and is now openly accessible online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-082275