Practical considerations

The aims and primary outcome of the study should be carefully considered to ascertain if a pedometer is an adequate measurement method.
What type of activities are the studied population likely to engage in? If it is predominantly walking then a pedometer may be suitable.
Similarly to accelerometers, decisions should be made at the outset on the number of days, and which days to be monitored. As with other methods, consider whether both weekend and weekdays are required for a habitual estimate of walking activity.
How will pedometers be returned?
Will incentives be offered to enhance compliance/improve the return rate?
Higher quality and therefore more expensive models have been shown to be superior to cheaper models of pedometers.
The choice of pedometer should be made carefully after considering the literature.
Some pedometers are not able to store data for more than 24 hours making it necessary for participants to log step counts daily; this is a potential source of bias and lost data. Newer models have a large data storage capacity which is preferable for research purposes.
In obese subjects the increased abdominal adiposity may cause the pedometer to be set at an angle and reduce its capacity to detect vertical acceleration.
An open display can influence behaviour and cause reactivity, which may be a problem for some studies.
If reactivity is suspected, look at data from day 1 and see if it is very different from subsequent days. If this is the case, then consider ignoring it.

A useful review of methodological considerations for researchers using pedometers to measure physical activity has been published (Tudor-Locke et al, 2001).

There is little research evidence for the goal of achieving 10,000 steps per day in adults (Welk et al, 2000), but it has been accepted by many researchers as a reasonable goal albeit too ambitious for some populations. The following classification has been suggested by Tudor-Locke (2004):

Under 5000 steps/day - sedentary lifestyle;

5,000-7,499 steps/day is typical of daily activity excluding sports/exercise and might be considered - inactive;

7,500-9,999 likely includes some exercise or walking (and/or a job that requires more walking) and might be considered - somewhat active;

10,000 steps/day indicates the point that should be used to classify individuals as – active;

> 12,500 steps/day should be classified as - highly active.

Various recommendations have been published for healthy children, all greater than 10,000 steps per day commonly cited for adults. For example, boys who accumulated 13,000 steps.d^-1 and girls who accumulated 12,000 steps.d^-1 were found to engage in sufficient moderate physical activity to meet recommendations for 60 minutes of moderate activity per day as measured by accelerometer (Rowlands and Eston, 2005).