How to Evaluate the Accuracy of a Pedometer
- 1). Get to know your pedometer. Pedometers come in a variety of types and quality levels. Study your manual and follow the maker's advice. Pay particular attention to where you're supposed to position the pedometer on your body. While some give you plenty of flexibility, others are next to useless if not positioned just right.
- 2). Realize that no pedometer is perfect. Some are better than others but counting steps isn't as straightforward as you might think, even for the best pedometer. If you pay attention to your movements, you'll realize you spend a lot of time moving in ways that aren't like ordinary walking, and these can throw your pedometer off. Don't just walk a few steps around the room and expect the pedometer to keep a perfect count. Instead, be ready to wear it all day and let the errors average out.
- 3). Count off steps on a test walk. Ultimately, the only way to check a pedometer is to count your steps as you walk, and compare the pedometer's count to yours. Make this test walk long enough for errors to average out. Just walk 100 steps and even the best pedometers may be off by five or more. A good distance is 1000 steps. Count them off, ideally on level ground, and see how close your pedometer is. If it's within five to ten steps out of 1000, it's close enough for your purposes.
- 4). Try wearing the pedometer in different positions. Most pedometers are meant to be clipped to the side of your waistband. If you're wearing it somewhere else and its count is way off, try it in that position and see if it does better. The small watch pocket inside the right pocket of a pair of jeans is ideal. For women, some pedometers will even let you clip them to the front of a sports bra. Repeat your measured test walk with the pedometer in different positions and see if it routinely does better in one particular spot.
- 5). Once you've got your pedometer working, check it occasionally for "drift." As you continue your walking program, you'll establish a set of favorite routes and you'll come to know roughly how many steps each of those routes is. If your pedometer starts regularly showing more, or fewer, steps for a known route, it may be developing a mechanical problem. Check it again using a measured walk and count your steps. Otherwise, you should now have a good idea of how accurate your pedometer is, and can use that knowledge to make your exercise program more effective.
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