A Computerized Lifestyle Application to Promote Multiple Health Behaviors at the Workplace: Testing Its Behavioral and Psychological Effects

Abstract

BackgroundPreventive health behaviors, such as regular physical activity and healthy nutrition, are recommended to maintain employability and to facilitate the health of employees. Theory-based workplace health promotion needs to include psychological constructs and consider the motivational readiness (so-called stages of change) of employees. According to the stages, people can be grouped as nonintenders (not motivated to change and not performing the goal behavior), intenders (decided to adopt the goal behavior but not started yet), or actors (performing the goal behavior already). The tailoring to these stages can be done computer based and should make workplace health promotion more effective.ObjectiveIt was tested whether a parsimonious computer-based health promotion program implemented at the workplace was effective in terms of lifestyle changes and psychological outcomes as well as body weight. We hypothesized that the stage-matched intervention would outperform the one-size-fits-all active control condition (standard care intervention).MethodsIn a randomized controlled trial, a total of 1269 employees were recruited by a trained research assistant at their workplace during a routine medical examination. After excluding noneligible employees, 560 completed Time 1 (T1), and 384 also completed Time 2 (T2), achieving a retention rate of 68.6%. Two fully automated computer-based treatments were adopted: (1) an active control condition with information about benefits of exercise and healthy nutrition (n=52), or (2) a stage-matched multiple-behavior intervention that provided different psychological treatments to 9 subgroups, addressing stages of change (nonintenders, intenders, and actors per behavior; n=332). Baseline assessments (T1) on behavior, psychological constructs, and body weight were repeated after 4 weeks (T2).ResultsThe stage-matched intervention outperformed the active control condition for lifestyle changes containing physical activity and nutrition (χ2 1=3.5; P=.04, for N=384) as well as psychological variables (physical activity intention, P=.04; nutrition intention, P=.03; nutrition planning, P=.02; and general social support to live healthily, P=.01). When predicting a healthy lifestyle at follow-up, baseline lifestyle (odds ratio, OR, 2.25, 95% CI 1.73-2.92; P<.01) and the intervention (OR 1.96, 95% CI 1.00-3.82; P=.05) were found to be significant predictors. Physical activity planning mediated the effect of the intervention on the adoption of an overall healthy lifestyle (consisting of activity and nutrition, R 2 adj=.08; P<.01), indicating that if the stage-matched intervention increased planning, the adoption of a healthy lifestyle was more likely.ConclusionsMatching an intervention to the motivational readiness of employees can make a health promotion program effective. Employees’ motivation, planning, social support, and lifestyle can be supported by a stage-matched intervention that focuses on both physical activity and healthy nutrition. Occupational settings provide a potential to ...

Intervention Engagement Moderates the Dose–Response Relationships in a Dietary Intervention

“… Abbreviations: ACG, active control group; EC, experimental condition. a Adapted from Lippke et al 13 …”

“…Coping planning refers to the anticipation of barriers that may hinder behavior performance and subsequently identifying strategies that help the individual cope with said barriers. 13 Action planning and coping planning work best in combination because they operate simultaneously as additive mediating processes and interactive counterparts. 14 In practice, this finding should result in the implementation of combined planning interventions.…”

Teknologian hyödyntäminen ja etäpalvelut työterveyshuollossa - ammattilaisten näkökulma

“…Etäterveydenhuoltoa koskeva tutkimus on kohdistunut pääasiassa muuhun kuin työterveyshuoltoon. Työterveyshuollon alueella on tutkittu lähinnä yksilöllisten terveyden voimavarojen vahvistamista digitaalisten välineiden avulla [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Etäterveydenhuollon käyttöönottotutkimuksessa on lisäksi painottunut lääkäreiden näkökulma, vaikka muutos kohdistuu kaikkiin terveydenhuollon ammattilaisiin [22,23].…”

“…Työterveyshuollossa digitaalisten menetelmien tulisikin integroitua osaksi työpaikan terveyden-ja turvallisuuden edistämisen prosesseja. Useimmiten ne kuitenkin toimivat vain prosessien erillisinä osina [9,39].…”

Körperliche Aktivität im Kontext der betrieblichen Gesundheitsförderung – ein systematisches Review zur Effektivität software- gegenüber personalgestützter Interventionen

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