The Power of Curiosity: Leveraging Curiosity to Motivate People to Complete Health Risk Assessments

The Power of Curiosity

The investigators will work with one of Vitality's partner corporations to test whether curiosity can motivate employees to follow through on their virtuous intentions and complete their annual health risk assessment (VHR). Employees will receive email messages that contain either a curiosity-inducing question or a standard encouragement message. The investigators predict that presenting people with curiosity-arousing questions will make them more likely to complete a health risk assessment, as compared to standard messages.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Intention; Exploratory Behavior
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Standard Message; Behavioral: Curiosity Message

Detailed Description

The vast majority of adults express the desire and intention of engaging in healthy behaviors-exercising, losing weight, getting a colonoscopy-but then fail to do so. This has massive individual and societal costs. This research tests a promising intervention to increase the likelihood that an adult will follow through on their health-related intentions. Curiosity can be a powerful motivator and can cause people to engage in new behaviors (Tomkins 1962; Silvia 2006); however, curiosity has not yet been used as an intervention to help people follow-through on their intentions. In this project, the investigators target employees who have failed to complete their annual Vitality Health Review (VHR) and test whether curiosity can be used to induce the employees to complete their VHR. The VHR is a medical questionnaire that can help individuals understand medical risk factors they may be prone to. The investigators provide employees with a question and inform them that they will see the answer upon completion of their VHR. The investigators hypothesize that the curiosity-inducing messages will cause employees to follow through on their intention to complete their VHR.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 10095
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Massachusetts
    • Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, 02138
      • Harvard Kennedy School

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (ADULT, OLDER_ADULT)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Employees at Vitality's partner's worksites that are in Vitality database
• Must have email address on file

Exclusion Criteria:

• Employees that have already completed their VHR by June 11, 2013

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Interventional Model: PARALLEL
• Masking: SINGLE

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
EXPERIMENTAL: Standard Message; Participants will receive email messages that encourage them to complete their VHR.	Behavioral: Standard Message; Participants will receive email messages that contain "standard" language encouraging them to complete their VHRs (health review that can be completed online).
EXPERIMENTAL: Curiosity Message; Participants receive email messages containing "curiosity-inducing" questions. The messages tell the participants that they will receive the answer to the question after they complete their VHR.	Behavioral: Curiosity Message; Participants will receive email messages that contain one of 8 curiosity-inducing questions. The message will tell participants that they will receive a message with the answer after they complete their VHR (health review that can be completed online).

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Completion of VHR	Whether the participant completes his/her VHR or not	Measured one month after first message (July 12, 2013)

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Previous VHR Completion during 2012-2013	Whether employee completed their VHR the previous year	On or before July 12, 2013
Social Atmosphere at Worksite	Measured by post-intervention survey with questions about how frequently employees at worksite interact and discuss non-work and Vitality-related matters	On or before August 12, 2013
Curiosity Type	For participants who receive "curiosity" messages, indicates which curiosity message they received.	On or before July 12, 2013

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Harvard University
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Todd Rogers, PhD, Harvard University; Principal Investigator: Erin Frey, Harvard University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: June 1, 2013
• Primary Completion (ACTUAL): November 1, 2013
• Study Completion (ACTUAL): November 1, 2013

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: June 7, 2013
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 10, 2013
• First Posted (ESTIMATE): June 12, 2013

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (ESTIMATE): August 31, 2016
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: August 29, 2016
• Last Verified: August 1, 2016

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Intention; Curiosity; Follow Through
• Other Study ID Numbers: F24176-101