Breaking up Sitting With a Treadmill Desk in Office Workers

Breaking up Prolonged Sitting Time in Office Workers With Light-intensity Walking: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Sitting for long uninterrupted periods of time can increase risk of heart disease, diabetes and early death, even if you take part in the United Kingdom government guidelines for physical activity of 21/2 hours per week of exercise. Effective interventions to reduce the risk of these diseases are therefore needed. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of regularly breaking up sitting time with light intensity treadmill desk walking among office workers on health markers, sitting time and physical activity. If using a treadmill desk leads to benefits in these disease risk markers then this could be an effective strategy to improve employee health in the workplace.

Participants will be randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. After baseline activity and health measures, they will take part in the study for 4 weeks.

Intervention group: Participants will have a treadmill desk placed in their office or a nearby location and will be asked to walk while working on the treadmill desk continuously for 20 minutes at a self-selected slow pace each hour for a minimum of 6 hours per shift. There will be one treadmill desk between 2-3 people.

Control group: Participants will be asked to work as usual at their regular workstation with no changes in their physical activity and dietary habits.

Sitting time and physical activity will be measured at baseline and during the last week f the intervention. A range of health and psychological measures will be taken at baseline and post-intervention.

Study Overview

• Status: Withdrawn
• Conditions: Sedentary Lifestyle; Type2 Diabetes; Cardiovascular Risk Factor
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Treadmill desk walking

• Study Type: Interventional
• Phase: Not Applicable

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 16 years to 63 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• adults aged 18-65 years who work for shifts lasting ≥ 6 h and spend ≥ 75% of this time sitting at their desk
• work a minimum of 3 days per week

Exclusion Criteria:

• the presence of any known blood borne disease
• self-reported diagnosed diabetes
• physical activity contraindications
• pregnancy
• any major injury or illness, tobacco use, or any other health issue that my limit the participant in carrying out the required activity bouts.
• any planned absence from their office for more than one week during the 4 week study period.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control; The control group will continue to work as usual at their regular workstations.
Experimental: Intervention; A shared treadmill workstation will be installed in participating offices, or in a nearby location in case there is no space to fit the workstation in the office, enrolled to this group. Within the intervention group there will be a maximum allocation of two participants per treadmill desk. The participants in the intervention group will be asked to interrupt their sitting with 20 minutes of self-selected light-intensity walking at a speed of 1-4 km/h each hour for a minimum of 6 hours per shift to accumulate a total of 2 hours of light-intensity activity per work day.	Behavioral: Treadmill desk walking; See intervention arm description

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in Workplace sitting time	This will be objectively measured using an activpal thigh worn activity monitor	Baseline and week 4 of intervention

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in Workplace stepping	This will be objectively measured using an activpal thigh worn activity monitor	Baseline and week 4 of intervention
Change in Daily sitting time	This will be objectively measured using an activpal thigh worn activity monitor	Baseline and week 4 of intervention
Change in Daily physical activity	This will be objectively measured using an activpal thigh worn activity monitor	Baseline and week 4 of intervention
Change in Sleep quality and quantity	Measured with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in Mental-wellbeing	Measured using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale. each of the following items is indicated on the following scale: none of the time=1; rarely=2; some of the time=3; often=4; all of the time=5 (5 indicating a better outcome).The total scores are summed. Items: I've been feeling optimistic about the future; I've been feeling useful; I've been feeling relaxed; I've been feeling interested in other people; I've had energy to spare; I've been dealing with problems well; I've been thinking clearly; I've been feeling good about myself; I've been feeling close to other people; I've been feeling confident; I've been able to make up my own mind about things; I've been feeling loved; I've been interested in new things; I've been feeling cheerful	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in body mass index (kg/m2)	Calculated with measurement of height and weight	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in waist circumference (cm)	Measured with a tape measure at the level of the umbillicus	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in blood pressure (mmHg)	Measured using an automated blood pressure monitoring device	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in blood glucose (mmol/L)	Measured via finger prick method and analysed using the Cholestech analyser	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in triglycerides (mmol/L)	Measured via finger prick method and analysed using the Cholestech analyser	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (mmol/L)	Measured via finger prick method and analysed using the Cholestech analyser	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in positive and negative affect	Measured using the positive and negative affect scale. Items will be measured on the following scale: very slightly or not at all=1; a little=2; moderately=3; quite a bit=4; extremely=5. The items are: interested; distressed; excited; upset; strong; guilty; scared; hostile; enthusiastic; proud; irritable; alert; ashamed; inspired; nervous; determined; attentive; jittery; active; afraid The 10 items for POSITIVE (PA) affect are: attentive, interested, alert, excited, enthusiastic, inspired, proud, determined, strong and active. The 10 items for NEGATIVE (NA) affect are: distressed, upset, hostile, irritable, scared, afraid, ashamed, guilty and nervous, jittery. The scores generated will vary along the scale of 10 - 50, with lower scores indicating low (positive or negative) affect and higher scores indicating high (positive or negative) affect.	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in self-efficacy	Measured using the Self-Efficacy Scale questionnaire (Schwarzer and Renner, 2009)	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in job performance	Measured using a single-item 7-point likert scale	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in work engagement	Measured using the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale multi-item 7-point likert scale	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in musculoskeletal symptoms	Measured using the Sandardised Nordic Questionnaire	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in presenteeism	Measured using the 8-item Work Limitations Questionnaire	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in quality of life	Measured using the World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in perceived stress	Measured using the Cohen Perceived Stress likert scale. 10 items are answered on the following scale that refer to the person's thoughts and feelings over the past month: never=1; almost never=2; sometimes=3; fairly often=4; very often=5 The items are in the past month how often have you: been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly; felt unable to control the important things in your life; felt nervous or stressed; felt confident about your ability to handle personal problems; felt that things were going your way; found that you could not cope with all the things you had to do; been able to control irritations in your life; that you were on top of things; been angry because of things that happened that were outside of your control; felt that difficulties were piling up so high that you could not overcome them Positively worded items are reverse scored and the ratings are summed, with higher scores indicating more perceived stress.	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)
Change in perceived vigor	Measured using a 12 item likert scale. The scale is: never of almost never=1; very infrequently=2; quite infrequently=3; sometimes=4; quite frequently=5; very frequently=6; always or almost always=7. The items are based on how often have you felt this way at work? There are three subscales of the Shirom-Melamed Vigor Measure. The three subscales are: Physical Strength; Emotional Energy; and Cognitive Liveliness. Higher scores indicate better outcomes.	Baseline and post-intervention (within 1 week after intervention ends)

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Bedfordshire

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Anticipated): March 22, 2018
• Primary Completion (Anticipated): October 30, 2018
• Study Completion (Anticipated): October 30, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: February 28, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 12, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): March 19, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): April 18, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 16, 2019
• Last Verified: April 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: physical activity; sedentary behaviour; prolonged sitting; office workplace
• Other Study ID Numbers: not yet available (not yet available)

Drug and device information, study documents

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