Sedentary Behavior Regulation Scale

Authors

Purpose

The primary purpose of the SBRS is to measure the self-regulatory capacities that enable individuals to consciously reduce or interrupt their Sedentary behavior. Historically, the field of physical activity epidemiology has relied on tools that simply ask respondents how many hours they spend sitting. However, these duration-focused metrics fail to capture the behavioral mechanisms required to change those habits. The SBRS fills this critical gap by providing a validated measure of how people manage their sitting time, rather than just how much they sit.

For researchers and clinicians, this instrument is highly valuable because it targets the actual levers of behavioral change. In environments where prolonged sitting is structurally embedded—such as modern office workplaces—knowing that a patient sits for nine hours a day is less useful than understanding their capacity to modify that environment or take active breaks. The SBRS equips professionals with a tool to assess these specific regulatory skills, facilitating the development of more effective, personalized public health interventions and workplace wellness programs.

Construct

The psychological construct measured by the SBRS is 'Sedentary behavior regulation,' conceptualized as an active, autonomously motivated process of managing sitting time in daily life. This construct is deeply rooted in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which posits that human behavior is driven by the fulfillment of basic psychological needs and intrinsic motivation. In the context of the SBRS, regulation involves self-awareness of one's sedentary habits, the intentional practice of interrupting prolonged sitting, and the proactive structuring of one's environment to encourage movement.

The construct is operationalized through two distinct but interrelated dimensions. The first dimension, Sedentary behavior management, captures the cognitive and behavioral strategies individuals use to monitor and consciously break up their sitting time. The second dimension focuses on environmental support and active movement in sedentary contexts, reflecting how individuals alter their physical surroundings or integrate micro-movements into otherwise stationary tasks. Together, these subscales provide a comprehensive picture of an individual's self-regulatory proficiency regarding sedentary habits.

Validity

The validation of the SBRS involved a rigorous examination of its criterion-related validity, comparing the new instrument against established measures of physical activity and sitting time. Specifically, researchers evaluated how well SBRS scores correlated with data from the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ). The findings revealed a small but statistically significant positive relationship with overall physical activity (r = .19), indicating that those who better regulate their sitting also tend to engage in slightly more physical activity.

More importantly, the scale demonstrated a moderate, negative correlation with total sedentary time (r = -.33). This inverse relationship is exactly what psychometricians would expect: individuals who score higher on Self-regulation report spending less time in prolonged sedentary states. These results provide robust evidence that the SBRS accurately captures the intended behavioral construct, aligning well with established psychometric standards for newly developed health behavior scales.

Convergent & Discriminant Validation Correlations

Reliability

The SBRS exhibits strong reliability metrics, indicating that it measures Sedentary behavior regulation consistently and accurately. Internal consistency was evaluated using both Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega, with the scale achieving an impressive value of .87 for both indices. This suggests a high degree of interrelatedness among the 12 items, meaning they reliably converge on the same underlying psychological construct without excessive redundancy.

In addition to internal consistency, the temporal stability of the scale was confirmed through test-retest reliability analysis. The instrument yielded an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of .85, demonstrating that respondents' scores remain stable over time when their underlying regulatory habits have not changed. These values easily exceed the standard psychometric threshold of .70 for acceptable reliability, confirming that the SBRS is a highly dependable tool for both cross-sectional research and longitudinal tracking in clinical settings.

Factor Analysis

The structural integrity of the SBRS was established through a comprehensive two-step factor analytic approach, utilizing independent subsamples to prevent model overfitting. Initially, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on a subsample of 300 participants to uncover the latent structure of the generated items. This process distilled the initial item pool down to a refined 12-item structure, revealing two distinct underlying factors: one related to the direct management of Sedentary behavior and another focused on environmental modifications and active movements.

Following the EFA, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed on a separate subsample of 300 participants to verify this two-factor model. The successful validation of the model confirms that the 12 items map cleanly onto their respective sub-factors. This robust methodological sequence ensures that the multidimensional structure of the SBRS is both statistically sound and theoretically aligned with the principles of behavioral regulation.

Subscales

Instrument

Sedentary Behavior Regulation Scale Items

Sample

600 Korean adults aged 20-59 years, recruited via the EMBRAIN online research panel using proportional stratified sampling based on region, sex, and age. The sample was randomly split into two independent subsamples of 300 for EFA and CFA.