Interventions reducing sedentary behaviour of adults: An update of evidence

Objectives: This review updates evidence of previous reviews on interventions that target reducing sedentary behaviour among 18- to 69-year-old working aged adults. Methods: A literature search of PubMed, Informit, Scopus, EBSCO, Web of Science and ProQuest. Quality was assessed for individual articles using McMaster University Guidelines. Descriptive analysis was used to summarise findings across studies. Results: Fifteen studies were identified with critical appraisal scores ranging from 10 to 14 (of a possible 15), with a mean score of 11.7 indicating overall moderate quality. The majority of interventions were implemented in the workplace. Others were based in the neighbourhood and education institution settings. Just over half of the studies (n = 9) reported a significant decrease in sedentary behaviour, including in total sedentary behaviour and sitting time, work sitting time and leisure sitting time. Overall sitting time decreases ranged from 8 to 122 minutes per day across all settings. Conclusion: There is some emerging evidence that sedentary behaviour interventions have the potential to reduce sedentary behaviour of working aged adults. However, given the paucity of literature, the effectiveness of such interventions is currently inconclusive. Further high-quality research across different settings is needed using validated standardised measures of sedentary behaviour.