Metabolic Equivalent (MET) Values for Activities in American Time Use Survey (ATUS)

This Web site is a companion piece to the paper:

Tudor-Locke C, Washington TL, Ainsworth BE, Troiano RP. Linking the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and the Compendium of Physical Activities: methods and rationale. J Phys Act Health. In press. [View PDF]

It contains, and provides a searchable interface to, Tables 3, 4, and 5 referenced in that article. Tables 1 and 2 are contained within the article itself.

The MET values presented on these tables and in the original article are to be used expressly for analysis of the American Time Use Data. While they are based on the Compendium of Physical Activities, the MET levels differ from those in the Compendium due to combining activities and their associated MET levels in the ATUS.

For consistency in assigning intensity values to physical activity questionnaires, researchers should use the MET values presented in the Compendium of Physical Activities.

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Download the Tables

You can download these tables in Comma-Separated Values (CSV) or MS Excel (XLS) format for analysis in SAS or other statistical software.

• SAS syntax for linking ATUS Activities with Compendium MET values
• Table 3:   CSV   XLS
• Table 4:   CSV   XLS
• Table 5:   CSV   XLS

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