Validity of Wearable Monitors and Smartphone Applications for Measuring Steps in Semi-Structured and Free-Living Settings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Paper deals with importantt task. The author try to validate the step count of 3 wearable monitors, as well as 2 Android apps, in a sample of healthy adults.

Suggestions:

1. please add a strong contribution at the Introduction section. Also please describe the practical value of the obtained results in different industries.

2. please add a strucure of this paper at the end of the Introduction section

3. the authors use only 24 persons. Please describe how you chose these participatns

4. as the number of participants is very smal the author should argue that this number of participats provide a generalization of the resuls obtained by author

5. please describe the limmitaions of the current research

 

Author Response

See attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well written and in line with the scope of the journal. It is noted that the author has several works developed in the area that are properly cited.

Improvement suggestions:

- The author should start the introduction by framing the importance of physical activity in people's physical and mental health. Only after that it makes sense to frame step counting applications.

- The research gap could be better explored considering also the differences of this work considering the previously published works by this author. 

- Author notes “Three wearable activity monitors and two smartphone apps were evaluated in a lab based semi-structured study….” The choice of applications for testing is not presented. What is the reason for this choice? How were they selected? Risk of bias should be avoided.

- The age range of the sample is very narrow. What is the reason for including only citizens between 25 and 35 years old?

- Explain better the relevance of calculating Body mass index (BMI) for this study.

- Lab-testing scenario is enough described textually. But perhaps if you present an image/diagram it would be better to know the different activities performed by the participants.

- Conclusions section should clarify the theoretical and practical implications provided by this study.

Author Response

See attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Paper can be accepted

Reviewer 2 Report

I confirm the paper can be accepted. Thanks for the revision.