How do different occupational factors influence total, occupational and leisure-time physical activity?

Background: A better understanding of how occupational indicators influence physical activity levels will aid the design of workplace interventions. Methods: Cross-sectional data was collected from 1194 participants through a telephone interview in Queensland, Australia. The IPAQ-long was used to measure physical activity. Multiple Logistic Regression was applied to examine associations. Results: 77.9% of participants were employed full-time, 32.3% had professional jobs, 35.7% were engaged in shift-work, 39.5% had physically demanding jobs, and 66.1% had high physical activity levels. Participants with a physically demanding job were less likely to have low total (OR=0.25, 95% CI=0.17–0.38) and occupational (OR=0.17, 95% CI=0.12–0.25) physical activity. Technical and trade workers were less likely to report low total physical activity (OR=0.44, 95% CI=0.20–0.97) compared to white-collar workers. Part-time (OR=1.74, 95% CI=1.15–2.64) and shift-workers (OR=1.86, 95% CI=1.21–2.88) were more likely to report low leisure-time activity. Conclusions: Overall, the impact of different occupational indicators on physical activity was not strong. As expected, the greatest proportion of total physical activity was derived from occupational physical activity. No evidence was found for compensation effects whereby physically demanding occupations lead to less leisure-time physical activity or vice-versa. This study demonstrates that workplaces are important settings to intervene, and that there is scope to increase leisure-time physical activity irrespective of occupational background.