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Article History

Received: 25 January 2017

Accepted: 8 March 2018

First Online: 20 March 2018

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: The study was designed as a covert observation in order to study naturally occurring physical activity behaviour. Therefore, it was essential that the observed participants did not know anything about the observation because informing the participants about the study may have significantly changed their behaviour. Both the official IRB of the University of Hawai’i, the ‘Office of Research Compliance Human Studies Program of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa’, and the official ‘Ethics Committee of the Faculty for Economy and Social Sciences at the University of Tübingen’ informed us that, as the research had no direct or indirect interactions with the participants being observed, being that it was covert, the study is not regarded as a human subject research by definition of federal regulation of the USA and according to the German law. Therefore, the study does not need ethics approval nor informed consent [].

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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