Interpretation of Multivariate Association Patterns between Multicollinear Physical Activity Accelerometry Data and Cardiometabolic Health in Children-A Tutorial

Associations between multicollinear accelerometry-derived physical activity (PA) data and cardiometabolic health in children needs to be analyzed using an approach that can handle collinearity among the explanatory variables. The aim of this paper is to provide readers a tutorial overview of interpretation of multivariate pattern analysis models using PA accelerometry data that reveals the associations to cardiometabolic health. A total of 841 children (age 10.2 ± 0.3 years) provided valid data on accelerometry (ActiGraph GT3X+) and six indices of cardiometabolic health that were used to create a composite score. We used a high-resolution PA description including 23 intensity variables covering the intensity spectrum (from 0-99 to ≥10000 counts per minute), and multivariate pattern analysis to analyze data. We report different statistical measures of the multivariate associations between PA and cardiometabolic health and use decentile groups of PA as a basis for discussing the meaning and impact of multicollinearity. We show that for high-resolution accelerometry data; considering all explanatory variables is crucial to obtain a correct interpretation of associations to cardiometabolic health; which is otherwise strongly confounded by multicollinearity in the dataset. Thus; multivariate pattern analysis challenges the traditional interpretation of findings from linear regression models assuming independent explanatory variables.