Field experiment of a very brief worksite intervention to improve nutrition among health care workers

Abstract

Despite the potential of worksite interventions to boost productivity and save insurance costs, they tend to be costly and tested in nonrandomized trials. The aim of the present study was to test the ability of a very brief worksite intervention based on implementation intentions to improve nutrition among health care workers. Seventy-nine health care workers were randomly allocated to a control condition or to form implementation intentions using standard instructions or with a supporting tool. Fruit intake and metacognitive processing (operationalized as awareness of standards, self-monitoring and self-regulatory effort) were measured at baseline and follow-up. Participants who formed implementation intentions ate significantly more fruit and engaged in significantly more metacognitive processing at follow-up than did participants in the control condition (ds > .70). The findings support the efficacy of implementation intentions for increasing fruit intake in health care workers and preliminary support for the utility of a tool to support implementation intention formation.

Does Situation-Specificity Affect the Operation of Implementation Intentions?

“…Fourth, a no-treatment control was not used therefore it is not possible to determine if the effects on physical activity are due to increases in the intervention condition or decreases in the control condition. There are two lines of evidence that the effect shown in this study is genuine: (a) previous studies that have compared standard volitional help sheets, active control and no-treatment have found null effects between the no-treatment and the active control (Armitage, 2008;) and (b) further studies have found no detrimental effects of the active control condition across a range of behaviors (Arden & Armitage, 2010;Armitage, 2008;Armitage, 2015;.…”

“…The effectiveness of the two versions of the physical activity volitional help sheet contribute to an emerging body of evidence that the volitional help sheet is a useful means of bringing about behavior change Armitage, 2015;Armitage, 2008;Armitage & Arden, 2010;Brewster et al, 2015). This study also builds on previous research by Armitage and Arden (2010) who found that the volitional help sheet was effective in increasing moderate physical activity in manual workers over one month.…”

“…Although these mechanisms are not yet amenable to direct measurement in the field, there is evidence that the effects of implementation intentions on behavior change can be explained by the effects of increased cue accessibility and cue-response links on self-regulation. Specifically, Armitage (Armitage, 2015) postulated that: (a) self-monitoring is increased by the reallocation of executive resources that are freed up because of the increased automatic activation of the implementation intention, (b) specifying critical situations increases awareness of standards, and (c) the automaticity of an appropriate response boosts self-regulatory effort. The study found that increased self-monitoring mediated the effect of the intervention on behaviour (Armitage, 2015).…”

“…Specifically, Armitage (Armitage, 2015) postulated that: (a) self-monitoring is increased by the reallocation of executive resources that are freed up because of the increased automatic activation of the implementation intention, (b) specifying critical situations increases awareness of standards, and (c) the automaticity of an appropriate response boosts self-regulatory effort. The study found that increased self-monitoring mediated the effect of the intervention on behaviour (Armitage, 2015). A secondary aim of the present study is therefore to examine if selfregulation mediates the effect of the two volitional help sheets on physical activity.…”

Randomized Controlled Trial of a Volitional Help Sheet to Encourage Weight Loss in the Middle East

“…The volitional help sheet has been tested in randomized controlled studies in several domains including smoking (Armitage 2008 , 2016 ), alcohol consumption (Armitage and Arden 2012 ), self-harm (Armitage et al 2016 ), dietary intake (Armitage 2015 ), and physical activity (Armitage and Arden 2010 ), but only once in the domain of weight loss. Armitage et al ( 2014 ) randomly allocated 72 overweight participants who were participating in a commercial weight-loss program in the UK to either an intervention (volitional help sheet) condition or a control (distracter task) condition.…”