Workplace Wellness: Improving Your Experience at Work

The primary objective of study was to compare affective (i.e., highlighted emotional benefits), instrumental (i.e., highlighted other health benefits), and self-regulation (i.e., demonstrated ways to plan, set goals, etc.) interventions in terms of their ability to motivate less sitting in the workplace. Research of this type is important because people sit for long periods of time at work which adversely affects their health and productivity.

It was hypothesized that the affective and self-regulation groups would sit less than the instrumental and control groups based on evidence indicating that affective attitude (i.e., emotional evaluation of the behavior) and self-regulation techniques tend to predict behavior.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Obesity; Sedentary Behavior
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Nutrition condition; Behavioral: Affective condition; Behavioral: Instrumental condition; Behavioral: Self-regulation condition

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 116
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Canada
  • British Columbia
    • Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, V8P 5C2
      • Behavioural Medicine Laboratory

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:

• From a local workplace in Victoria
• Full-time employee (i.e., greater than 35 hours per week)
• Reported over 5.5 hours of sitting per day at work
• Agreed to attend the 3 intervention sessions

Exclusion Criteria:

• Not from a local workplace in Victoria
• Not a full-time employee (i.e., 35 hours or less per week)
• Reported less than 5.5 hours of sitting per day at work
• Did not agree to attend the 3 intervention sessions

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

4

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Nutrition condition; Received nutrition information such as the comparison of nutritional information between orange juice and soda pop. Received intervention following measurements at baseline, week 4, and week 8.	Behavioral: Nutrition condition; Received nutritional information in in-person PowerPoint presentations.
Experimental: Affective condition; Learned about the affective benefits (e.g., less depression) of reduced office sitting time through taking active breaks. Received intervention following measurements at baseline, week 4, and week 8.	Behavioral: Affective condition; Received information about affective benefits of less sitting in the workplace in in-person PowerPoint presentations.
Experimental: Instrumental condition; Learned about instrumental benefits such as the relationship between sitting and cardiovascular disease and absenteeism at work. Received intervention following measurements at baseline, week 4, and week 8.	Behavioral: Instrumental condition; Received information about instrumental benefits of less sitting in the workplace in in-person PowerPoint presentations.
Experimental: Self-regulation condition; Learned how to self-monitor their sedentary behavior and active breaks. They also learned how to create prompts/cues (e.g., sticky note reminder), problem solve to overcome barriers, action plan (i.e., specifying when, where, and how to do the behavior), and set goals in order to be less sedentary according to SMART (i.e., specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-oriented) principles. Received intervention following measurements at baseline, week 4, and week 8.	Behavioral: Self-regulation condition; Learned how to self-regulate behavior to sit less in the workplace in in-person PowerPoint presentations.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Sitting time	Average hours of sitting time per day at work	Twelve weeks post-baseline

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Victoria
• Collaborators: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Lithopoulos A, Kaushal N, Beauchamp MR, Conner M, de Bruijn GJ, Latimer-Cheung AE, Rhodes RE. Changing Sedentary Behavior in the Office: A Randomised Controlled Trial Comparing the Effect of Affective, Instrumental, and Self-Regulatory Messaging on Sitting. Appl Psychol Health Well Being. 2020 Nov;12(3):687-702. doi: 10.1111/aphw.12202. Epub 2020 May 19.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 1, 2014
• Primary Completion (Actual): April 1, 2015
• Study Completion (Actual): April 1, 2015

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: September 4, 2019
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 6, 2019
• First Posted (Actual): September 9, 2019

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): September 9, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 6, 2019
• Last Verified: September 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 13-108

Drug and device information, study documents

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