Reducing Sedentary Behaviour in Office Workers With a HAPA mHealth Intervention and a Just In-Time Adaptive Intervention

Reducing Sedentary Behaviour in Office Workers With a mHealth Health Action Process Approach Intervention and a Just In-Time Adaptive Intervention

This study will explore the effectiveness of two different interventions, a Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) mobile health (mHealth) intervention and a Just In-Time Adaptive Intervention (JITAI), on reducing sedentary behaviour in office workers. One third of participants will receive the mHealth HAPA intervention, consisting of a theory-driven behavioural counselling session with personalized daily SMS text messages, and another third of participants will receive the JITAI intervention, a behaviour tracking mobile phone application that will alert participants once a set sedentary behaviour condition has been met. The last third of participants will act as a control where they will not receive an intervention or any further information from the letter of information. The study will take place over four weeks, with the first acting as a baseline and the intervention period filling the latter three weeks.

Study Overview

• Status: Not yet recruiting
• Conditions: Sedentary Behaviour; Health Behaviour Change
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: HAPA behavioural counselling + SMS text message boosters; Device: JITAI

Detailed Description

This three-arm repeated measure randomized control trial will randomize participants into two intervention groups and one control group to attempt to reduce sedentary behaviour in office workers. The study will last for four weeks, the first week of the study will be used for baseline measurement and the remaining three weeks used for the intervention.

Participants will be full time office workers primarily recruited from large businesses and corporations. The primary purpose of the study will be to decrease sedentary behaviour in office workers from pre- to post-intervention by breaking up extended periods of sedentary time. The secondary objectives of the study are to compare the effectiveness of each group against one another to assess for any significant differences in sedentary behaviour profiles, total time spent sitting, break frequency, break duration, and time not spent sedentary as well as to examine whether physical activity changed over the course of the intervention.

One intervention group will attempt to reduce sedentary behaviour by receiving push notifications from an EMA tracking mobile phone application after a pre-set sedentary behaviour condition has been met. The application will monitor and collect data from the on-board accelerometer of the participant's phone and when a threshold of 30 consecutive sedentary minutes has been reached, the application will administer a notification asking the participant to break the extended sedentary behaviour they are currently engaged in.

The other intervention group will receive a theory-based behaviour change counselling session paired with daily personalized SMS text message boosters to achieve the study's aims. The counselling sessions and SMS text messages will be framed through the Health Action Process Approach, a behaviour change model that centres around action planning and coping planning. The control group will receive no intervention or further information from the letter of information.

Sedentary behaviour will be collected in the form of duration of time spent sitting, frequency of sedentary behaviour breaks, and duration of sedentary behaviour breaks. These variables will be measured through an EMA tracking mobile phone application that will be downloaded by each participant as well as a weekly online sedentary behaviour questionnaire. Outcome measures will be compared within and between groups to detect differences.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Anticipated): 93
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Harry Prapavessis, Ph.D; Phone Number: 80173 519 661-2111; Email: hparapave@uwo.ca

Study Locations

• Canada
  • Ontario
    • London, Ontario, Canada
      • The University of Western Ontario

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:

• 18 years of age or older
• full-time employee in a desk-based office job (work from home accepted)
• have access to a mobile phone with internet connection
• can read and write in English

Exclusion Criteria:

• any medical or physical limitation that would prevent standing, stretching, and/or light physical activity

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

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

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: mHealth HAPA Intervention Group; This intervention group will receive a single one-on-one online behavioural counselling session and daily personalized SMS text message boosters with the aim of increasing the breaking of consecutive work related sedentary behaviour. Counselling strategies will be grounded in the HAPA model, specifically focusing on the creation of an action plan and the development of coping strategies to increase sedentary behaviour breaks. The SMS text message boosters will be personalized based on participant's preferences of timing, type, frequency, and length. The boosters will framed through HAPA principles with content focusing on risk awareness, outcome expectancy, action and coping planning, barriers and resources, and self-efficacy. The intervention will last for three weeks.	Behavioral: HAPA behavioural counselling + SMS text message boosters; Behavioural counseling grounded in the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA; i.e., action planning and coping planning) paired with daily personalized HAPA guided SMS text message boosters to reduce consecutive workplace sedentary behaviour.
Experimental: JITAI Group; This intervention group will receive push notifications from a EMA behaviour monitoring mobile application that will be downloaded to each participants' mobile phones. The application will measure and monitor a participant's sedentary behaviour and once a pre-set condition of 30 consecutive sedentary minutes has been reached, the application will administer a push notification notifying the participant to break their sedentary behaviour. The push notifications will ask the participants to stand up, stretch, or lightly walk around to break their current behaviour. The intervention will last for three weeks.	Device: JITAI; EMA monitoring mobile phone application that uses a phone's on-board accelerometer to monitor a participant's sedentary behaviour and deliver a push notification once a set condition has been met. This intervention will be utilized to reduce consecutive workplace sedentary behaviour.; Other Names: mEMA (ilumivu Inc., Boston, MA, www.ilumivu.com)
No Intervention: Control Group; The control group will receive no intervention or further instruction past the letter of information.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Changes in Frequency of Breaks from Sitting at Work	mEMA app (ilumivu Inc., Boston, MA, www.ilumivu.com); accelerometer data Modified version of the SIT-Q 7d (Wijndaele et al., 2014; Sui & Prapavessis, 2016); 1-item; 12-point scale	Baseline, Weeks 2, 3, 4
Changes in Duration of Breaks from Sitting at Work	mEMA app (ilumivu Inc., Boston, MA, www.ilumivu.com); accelerometer data Modified version of the SIT-Q 7d (Wijndaele et al., 2014; Sui & Prapavessis, 2016); 1-item; 10-point scale	Baseline, Weeks 2, 3, 4
Changes in Time Spent Sitting at Work	mEMA app (ilumivu Inc., Boston, MA, www.ilumivu.com); accelerometer data Modified version of the SIT-Q 7d (Wijndaele et al., 2014; Sui & Prapavessis, 2016)	Baseline, Weeks 2, 3, 4
Changes in Time Spent Standing at Work	mEMA app (ilumivu Inc., Boston, MA, www.ilumivu.com); accelerometer data	Baseline, Weeks 2, 3, 4
Changes in Time Spent Engaged in Light Physical Activity at Work	mEMA app (ilumivu Inc., Boston, MA, www.ilumivu.com); accelerometer data	Baseline, Weeks 2, 3, 4

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Age	Assessed with a single item question: "What is your age?"	Baseline
Sex	Assessed with a single item question: "What is your sex?"	Baseline
Gender	Assessed with a single item question: "What gender do you most identify with?"	Baseline
Ethnicity	Assessed with a single item question: "What ethnicity do you most identify with?"	Baseline
Work Environment	Assessed with a three item question: "What is your current work environment?"; in office, at home, hybrid	Baseline
Type of Occupation	Assessed with a four item question: "What general sector does your occupation fall under?"; private, public, charity, other	Baseline
Hours of Work per Week	Assessed with a single item question: "What are your typical hours of work on an average week?"	Baseline
Education Level	Assessed with a single item question: "What is your current formal education level?"	Baseline
Height	Assessed with a single item question: "What is your height in either inches or centimetres?"	Baseline
Weight	Assessed with a single item question: "What is your weight in either pounds or kilograms?"	Baseline

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Western University, Canada

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Anticipated): December 1, 2021
• Primary Completion (Anticipated): March 1, 2022
• Study Completion (Anticipated): June 1, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: October 29, 2021
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 29, 2021
• First Posted (Actual): November 10, 2021

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): December 23, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 7, 2021
• Last Verified: December 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Sedentary Behaviour; Health Behaviour Change; Health Action Process Approach; HAPA; Office Workers; JITAI; Just In-Time Adaptive Intervention
• Other Study ID Numbers: 119926

Drug and device information, study documents

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