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Public Use Data

In 2010-2011 the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene conducted the Physical Activity and Transit Survey (PAT). As part of the Health Department's ongoing commitment to make data available for analysis, policymaking and program development, we have made these datasets available for download for use by researchers, students, and the public health community. The PAT Survey consisted of three parts: (1) a telephone survey of physical activity and health (2) a weeklong accelerometer device component for a sub-sample of participants and (3) a weeklong GPS device component. Survey and accelerometer data are now available for download and public use.

Three datasets are available for download:

  1. Survey data; N=3811 respondents;
  2. Weeklong accelerometer data for valid cases (wear time 10+ hours on 4+ days); N=679 respondents;
  3. Raw minute-by-minute accelerometer data for 1 week; N=679 respondents

For more information on the PAT, visit:

Prior to downloading the datasets below, please review the following information:

  1. Due to the complex sampling design of the PAT, data should be analyzed in a software program capable of calculating variance for complex survey data. These include SAS, SPSS, SUDAAN, and STATA. Annotated sample code for analysis using SAS and SUDAAN is provided for all three data sets. More information about design statements and nesting variables are located in those programs.

  2. Some variables are not included in the datasets below, but may be requested through a Data Use Agreement. If you would like datasets that contain variables noted in the codebooks as available with a Data Use Agreement, please complete the EPI data request form.

  3. Some conditions may be rare or the sample sizes for some populations quite small, making PAT estimates potentially unreliable. Organizations have various guidelines for when an estimate should be considered unreliable. See our suggested guidelines for data reliability (PDF) which incorporate relative standard error (RSE), confidence interval width, and sample size.

  4. For any published analysis using downloadable PAT data, please reference the URL of this webpage and the date on which the dataset was downloaded (suggested citation below).

  5. The PAT survey was conducted using both landline and cellular telephone sample frames.

  6. Most variables in the PAT have very few missing values (less than 2% on average). Responses of 'don't know' and 'refused' are coded as missing (.d and .r, respectively, outliers are coded with a .v). In select cases, responses of 'don't know' are coded as a non-missing response category because these responses were intended to be a valid response category; they comprise more than 10% of responses; or to maintain consistency with other datasets. By default, SAS and SUDAAN exclude missing values from analysis. If you are interested in using methods such as imputation to address missing data, please send an email to survey@health.nyc.gov (include "imputation" in the subject heading).

  7. The questionnaire contains self-reported information on chronic conditions, mental health, neighborhood perceptions and physical activity.

  8. The accelerometer overview file contains weeklong data for all participants with at least 10 hours of wear time on 4+ days, per NHANES protocol from 2005-2006; the minutes file contains information on each minute of the week (including non-wear time) for each of these 679 accelerometer participants.

PAT Public Use Datasets

PAT SURVEY DATA 2010-2011
Questionnaire (PDF)
Codebook (PDF)
Dataset (SAS)
Call in program, formats, and sample code for analyzing data (SAS + SUDAAN)

PAT ACCELEROMETER WEEKLONG DATA 2011
Device Methodology (PDF)
Codebook (PDF)
Dataset (SAS)
Call in program, formats, and sample code for analyzing data (SAS + SUDAAN)

PAT ACCELEROMETER RAW (MINUTE) DATA 2011
Codebook (PDF)
Dataset (SAS)
Call in program, formats, and sample code for analyzing the data (SAS+SUDAAN)

Suggested Citation

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Physical Activity and Transit Survey 2010-2011 ; public use dataset accessed on [DATE].

Additional References

Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee. Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Report, 2008. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services, 2008. http://www.health.gov/paguidelines

Troiano RP, Berrigan D, Dodd KW, Masse LC, Tilert T, McDowell M. Physical Activity in the United States Measured by Accelerometer. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2007.

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