Health-related lifestyle and dropout from a web-based physical activity intervention trial in older adults: A latent profile analysis.

Abstract

Objective: Selective study dropout limits manifestation and detection of intervention effects and is a major challenge in behavioral intervention studies. Engaging in health-risk behaviors might make individuals especially dropout-vulnerable. Thus, this theory-based study's aim was to identify health-related lifestyle profiles affecting dropout in a web-based physical activity intervention trial targeting older adults. Method: The 12week intervention trial was conducted between 2016 and 2018 in Germany. Baseline lifestyle profiles consisting of self-reported physical activity, sedentary behavior, alcohol consumption, fruit and vegetable intake, nocturnal sleep, and social activity were assessed with questionnaires and investigated in 589 individuals. The risk of study dropout related to health-related lifestyle profile was tested with Poisson regression in 571 individuals (96.9%). Results: Latent profile analysis identified four latent health-related lifestyle profiles: socially inactive (n = 23, 3.9%), slightly unhealthy (n = 449, 75.2%), health-promoting (n = 81, 13.8%), and highly physically active lifestyle (n = 36, 6.1%). Profiles differed significantly by sex, stage of behavior change, and subjective health. Compared with the average of all profiles, statistically significant study dropout adjusted risk ratios (aRR) were 1.91 for the socially inactive lifestyle, and aRR = 0.73 for the slightly unhealthy lifestyle. There were no statistically significant effects for the highly physically active lifestyle (aRR = 0.94) and the healthpromoting lifestyle (aRR = 0.76) on study dropout. Conclusions: This study highlights the relevance of accounting for the correlation between health-related lifestyle profiles and study participation of older adults in physical activity interventions.

What Intervention Elements Drive Weight Loss in Blended-Care Behavior Change Interventions? A Real-World Data Analysis with 25,706 Patients

“…Furthermore, predictors in the linear regression model used here were highly intercorrelated, reducing the interpretability of the impact of the individual intervention elements. Lastly, it is well established that patients with low weight loss are more likely to churn or drop out from treatment over time [ 37 ]. Accordingly, these churned patients will not have contributed data at later time points (e.g., 12 months).…”

Impact of Activity Tracker Usage in Combination with a Physical Activity Intervention on Physical and Cognitive Parameters in Healthy Adults Aged 60+: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…However, studies have shown that web-based and print-based physical activity interventions can increase physical activity in middle-aged and older adults similarly [ 95 , 96 ], suggesting few differences in impact. The recruitment strategy of PROMOTE I and II (mainly targeted active, healthy and science-interested community-dwelling older adults) as well as the systematic dropout in PROMOTE I might also limit the analyzed sample’s representativeness of community-dwelling older adults and should be considered when interpreting the results [ 97 , 98 ]. The recruitment strategy was adapted from PROMOTE I to II because of a physically active and highly educated sample.…”

Mitigating Feelings of Loneliness and Depression by Means of Web-Based or Print-Based Physical Activity Interventions: Pooled Analysis of 2 Community-Based Intervention Trials

“…Therefore, to reduce the dropout rate in the WLCG, individuals randomized to this group should be informed about the progress and expected time of participation. As previous studies have indicated that longer waiting times are associated with higher dropout rates, the study design should be adapted to decrease the waiting time for the WLCG [ 8 , 22 , 54 ].…”

“…The PROMOTE study comprised 2 cohorts: PROMOTE 1 and 2. In this study, web-and print-based programs to promote PA in community-dwelling older adults were developed, analyzed, and evaluated according to multiple theoretical models and intervention effects using randomized intervention trials [49][50][51][52][53][54]. These were conducted as part of the interdisciplinary Physical Activity and Health Equity: Primary Prevention for Healthy Aging research network [55].…”

“…All the used instruments were validated before and are described in the study protocols [49,51], as well as in previous publications [50,[52][53][54].…”