The study's use of objective data from accelerometers, capturing all daily physical activity, was a major strength compared to previous studies relying on self-report.

“It's measuring the short burst of exercise that you would never think about. Like if someone were to ask me how many minutes I exercise a week, I would only include my structured defined workouts that I set aside to work out. I wouldn't include, you know, the three times a day I'm sprinting around my yard with my puppy or, you know, once a day that I'm playing soccer with my son, right? I don't include those, but I'm absolutely getting my heart rate up”

“So an accelerometer is literally a device that you wear on your wrist and it is measuring the direction of movement and the physical intensity of movement. So if I move my wrist say slowly that might be light activity intensity light intensity activity. If I move it more vigorously that might be vigorous intensity. So this accelerometer device is measuring, you know, the intensity of people's movements throughout the day, the direction of that intensity because it just has this physical, you know, an accelerometer in it which just measures the direction and the intensity of physical activity. And so every 10 seconds throughout the day, it's measuring their intensity of physical activity. And then based on a certain threshold of how intense their movement is that would get bucketed into being a light intensity activity, a moderate intensity activity or a vigorous intensity activity.”