Weekly assessment of number of yoga classes and amount of yoga home practice: Agreement with daily diaries

Abstract Objective: To evaluate a weekly yoga practice assessment instrument designed to assess number of classes attended in the previous week, number of times engaged in formal home yoga practice, total number of minutes engaged in formal home yoga practice in the past week, and number of times engaged in informal home yoga practice. “Informal” practice was defined as “in the middle of other activities, you spent a few moments engaged in asanas/postures, focus on breath, body awareness, or very brief meditation, for less than 5 min at a time.” We assessed agreement between this weekly assessment and a daily home practice log. Design and setting: Seventy-two community yoga practitioners completed online daily yoga logs for 28 days as well as the weekly yoga practice assessment four times over the 28 day period. Results: We examined agreement between the two methods on the four indices of amount of weekly yoga practice. We found acceptable agreement between the two methods for number of classes, number of times engaged in formal home practice, and total number of minutes engaged in formal home practice. Agreement was lower for number of times engaged in informal practice. Conclusions: These data provide support for use of a weekly yoga practice assessment to assess number of classes attended and amount of formal but not informal home practice.