Daily sitting time among a sample of Australian office-based employees

Prolonged time spent in sedentary behaviours (e.g. too much sitting) has emerged as a new behavioural risk factor for chronic diseases, independent of the amount of time spent in leisure-time physical activity. Work setting is important, given that employed adults spend more than half of their waking hours in the workplace.

This study published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health aims to examine prevalence estimates of total and domain-specific sitting time among Australian desk-based employees, and to help inform who is most at risk of extended sitting time, and in which domain this occurs.  Public health strategies to reduce daily sitting levels in desk-based workers should particularly focus on younger, overweight/obese and insufficiently active individuals, as it seems that they are at the highest risk of this health-risk behaviour. The article is on open access.

Bennie, J. A., Pedisic, Z., Timperio, A., Crawford, D., Dunstan, D., Bauman, A., van Uffelen, J. and Salmon, J. (2014), Total and domain-specific sitting time among employees in desk-based work settings in Australia. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.12293