A feasibility study evaluating a family-centered web-based intervention to promote physical activity among children
Date
2020-08-31
Authors
Adiputranto, Dimas
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Abstract
Background: Family-centered web-based lifestyle interventions have the potential to be a scalable and cost-effective strategy to promote physical activity for children. However, program engagement and attrition are key challenges facing self-guided web-based interventions. Human email-mediated support may be a solution to these challenges. Currently, there is a lack of research examining whether the addition of human email-mediated support to self-guided family-centered physical activity interventions can improve engagement and intervention effectiveness. Thus, a feasibility study is needed to further understand ways to enhance web-based intervention delivery.
Objective: (i) Evaluate the feasibility (recruitment, attrition, engagement, satisfaction) of a human email-mediated support compared to a self-guided web-based intervention (ii) examine the potential efficacy of a human-supported versus self-guided web-based intervention in improving children’s physical activity and parental support behaviours.
Methods: Children aged 8-12 years old who did not meet the Canadian physical activity guidelines were recruited. Families were allocated to either 10-week human email-mediated support or self-guided program. The programs were developed using the multi-process action control (M-PAC) framework. The programs provided information and interactive online activities targeting healthier lifestyle behaviours. The human support group received multiple weekly support emails as needed. The self-guided only received one generic email per week. Both parents and children completed validated questionnaires assessing physical activity and parental support behaviours pre- and post- 10-week intervention. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze recruitment rate, attrition and website engagement. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to evaluate intervention effectiveness. Post-program interviews were added to further explore program satisfaction.
Results: Fifty-one families contacted the researcher and eighteen families completed follow-up measures. The overall recruitment rate over a 16-month period was 41% (21/51). The attrition for human email-mediated support and the self-guided group was 10% and 18.2%, respectively. The attrition for both groups was 14% (3/21). The human email-mediated support group showed a significantly higher login frequency (4.7±2.1 vs. 2.3±1.4, respectively; p = 0.02), percentage of core pages accessed (35.8±19.6 vs. 13.1±18.2, respectively; p = 0.02), and total time spent in minutes (180.6±110.6 vs. 108.8±88.1, respectively; p = 0.01). The human email-mediated support group was more satisfied with the program compared to the self-guided group (p < 0.05). Both human support and self-guided groups improved their informational and appraisal-emotional support (p < 0.01; ηp2 = 0.9), parent self-efficacy to support their child’s physical activity (p = 0.03; ηp2 = 0.27), and child physical activity confidence (p = 0.04; ηp2 = 0.26). Children in the human email-mediated group showed a greater increase in the children’s physical activity intrinsic motivation (p = 0.02; ηp2 = 0.34) than self-guided group following the intervention. Conclusions: Study recruitment was a challenge. The human email-mediated support group had a lower attrition rate and a higher engagement than the self-guided group. Both interventions showed potential efficacy in improving physical activity measures. A full-scale study is recommended to confirm findings.
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Keywords
Feasibility, Web-based intervention, Family-centred, Physical activity, Children