Towards more personalized digital health interventions: impact of emotions and physical complaints on goals, action and coping plans to promote physical activity

Abstract

Background. Despite effectiveness of action and coping planning in digital health interventions to promote physical activity (PA), attrition rates remain high. Indeed, support to make plans is often abstract and generic. Nevertheless, people are different, and context varies. Tailored support involving personalized suggestions of specific plans, may be one way to help. As a first step, we designed a study to identify whether dynamic user information (i.e. emotions, physical complaints) relates toward goals, specific action plans (APs) and coping plans (CPs). Methods. Each morning for eight consecutive days, students (n = 362) were instructed to create APs and CPs to reach their PA goal and answered questions regarding emotions and physical complaints. To examine associations between emotions, physical complaints and content of the created goals, APs and CPs, generalized linear mixed effect models were fitted using the lme4-package in R. Results. Between- and within-individual variations in emotions and physical complaints influenced the content of goals. When experiencing more positive emotions, a higher goal in terms of minutes PA was set (within: P < .001, between: P = .023). If participants had more negative emotions, were more fatigued and experienced more pain, a lower goal in terms of minutes PA was set (within: P < .001; within: P < .001; within: P = .025 respectively). Between- and within-individual variations in positive emotions, fatigue and pain also influenced the content of APs and barriers of CPs. When experiencing more positive emotions, activities outside (within: P = .016, between: P = .011), not at home (within: P = .013, between: P = .007) and with someone else were preferred (within: P < .001, between: P < .001), whereas if participants were more fatigued, they preferred doing activities alone (within: P = .006), and if participants experienced more pain, they preferred light-to-moderate instead of high intensity activities (within: P = .024). Lastly, when participants had more positive emotions, they reported more external barriers (within: P = .004, between: P = .003) whereas when participants were more fatigued and experienced more pain, they reported more internal barriers (within: P = .010, between: P < .001; within: P < .001 respectively). Conclusions. This study reveals associations between emotions, physical complaints and the content of goals, APs and CPs participants set. Consequently, the knowledge acquired from these findings might be used to ultimately personalize suggestions of goals, APs and CPs in a more dynamic manner. However, further validation and refinement with experts and experimental designs are needed.