Testing the Efficacy of Pokemon Go for Increasing Physical Activity

Pokémon Go Modestly Increases Time Spent Active Among Healthy Adults

Historically, increasing activity was synonymous with exercise; however, it is now thought that even much more modest activity levels (e.g., simply walking) or merely decreasing the proportion of sedentary time may be sufficient to decrease future morbidity and mortality. Some interventions designed to increase activity have shown promise; others have been less successful. But even promising interventions are often difficult to generalize to real-life clinical settings. One barrier to monitoring the effectiveness of interventions has been the lack of availability of accurate, reliable and inexpensive personal activity monitoring equipment. The availability of inexpensive pedometers, and, more recently, low cost triaxial accelerometers, has now made it much easier to monitor activity levels and provide feedback to users. These devices are ideal for capturing activity associated with walking, the most popular and acceptable form of exercise, but only if patients actually wear them. Thus, there is a need to develop pragmatic approaches that encourage patients to not only wear these monitoring devices, but also motivate them to increase their activity.

In recent years, games have been used in a variety of settings to motivate and change behavior. Games not only provide performance feedback to patients, but also provide incentives for achieving goals in a context that is fun, intrinsically rewarding, and easy to understand. Successful games effectively exploit motivating social factors (e.g., competition, peer support, and entertainment) to maintain interest and engage participants. Steps are counted using a commercially available triaxial accelerometer (e.g., a FitBit). Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game that encourages players to go outside to search for Pokemon creatures.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Sedentary Lifestyle
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Fitbit Only; Behavioral: Fitbit + Pokemon Go

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 100
• Phase: Not Applicable

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 80 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18-80 years of age, healthy adults, own smart phone, have access to the Internet, fluent in English, no contraindications to physical activity, not pregnant or planning to become pregnant, had not previously played Pokemon Go game

Exclusion Criteria:

• <18 year or older than 80 years of age, did not own smart phone, did not have access to the Internet, not fluent in English, any contraindications to physical activity, pregnant or planning to become pregnant in next 2 months, had previously played Pokemon Go game

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Fitbit-only Group; Participants randomized to the FB group were provided a Fitbit Zip activity monitor and were instructed on how to wear the monitor, how to pair the activity monitor to their smartphone, and asked to provide our team consent to access their Fitbit data through Fitbit's Application Programming Interface (API)	Behavioral: Fitbit Only; Participants received a Fitbit Zip to wear daily for 8 weeks.
Experimental: Fitbit + Pokémon Go Group; Participants randomized to the FB+P group received the same Fitbit Zip activity monitor and text message reminders as the FB group. This group was also shown how to download the Pokémon Go application to their smartphone and were provided brief instructions on how to play the game. Participants were instructed to simply explore the game and play it at their leisure. Participants were not provided any specific goals related to game play or physical activity in general.	Behavioral: Fitbit + Pokemon Go; Participants received a Fitbit Zip to wear daily for 8 weeks. Participants also received access to the Pokemon Go game.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Average daily steps	Daily steps measured by Fitbit Zip	Eight weeks

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Iowa
• Collaborators: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): July 20, 2016
• Primary Completion (Actual): October 30, 2016
• Study Completion (Actual): April 1, 2017

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 5, 2017
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 6, 2017
• First Posted (Actual): April 12, 2017

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): April 28, 2017
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 26, 2017
• Last Verified: April 1, 2017

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 201607768; 5K25HL122305 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No
• IPD Plan Description: No plan to share individual data with other researchers.

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No