Promoting Contextually Cued PA Habits

Exercise Clinical Trial

Official title:

Promoting Contextually Cued Physical Activity Habits: A Pilot Study Using Cue-Contingent Financial Incentives for Daily Walking

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04691596
• Other study ID #: 1698
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: February 28, 2019
• Est. completion date: August 21, 2020

Study information

• Verified date: July 2023
• Source: Arizona State University
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The primary goal of this two-month pilot study is to measure the behavioral change induced by targeted habit formation reminders that are surfaced via an iPhone app and financial incentives that were offered conditional on using a personalized contextual cue for a daily walking habit. The data and user feedback collected during this study will also be used to optimize the design and content of the iPhone app, which will be tested in future, larger scale experimental research.

Description:

Subjects for this research are recruited on campus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the State University of New York at Albany, and their participation was incentivized. After meeting the eligibility criterion (including have at least some intrinsic motivation for increasing physical activity), downloading the project's iPhone app, and signing the project consent form, all participants will have their step count data recorded for an 8-week study period.

Existing interventions that have successfully improved study participants' health-related behaviors typically find that behavioral changes do not persist beyond 3 months after the intervention period. Fortunately, novel habit formation interventions from the psychology literature offer the potential for building long-term behavioral change and avoiding the common "relapse triangles" observed in these existing behavioral interventions. These new methods are based on the theory that habits are formed through the repetition of the same behavior in response to a stable, environmental cue. After an initial period of repetition, automaticity is formed, and the behavioral response becomes more effortlessly/unconsciously induced by the environmental cue. Behavioral reminders that reinforce a specific behavioral routine-environmental cue pair have been shown to support this initial period of habit formation; however, given the individualized nature of these reminders, a generalizable intervention method has not been developed and empirically tested. This research will use an iPhone app to examine the role of both general informational on contextually cued habits and the use of personalized reminders and financial incentives for using a daily physical activity contextual cue on the persistence of physical activity behavior after the intervention tools are withdrawn.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 137
• Est. completion date: August 21, 2020
• Est. primary completion date: August 21, 2019
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 65 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18+ years of age

• Have an existing wellness goal related to increasing physical activity

• Access to an iPhone with iOS 10 or above (in order to use the app)

• Proficiency in speaking and reading English

Exclusion Criteria:

• Have a major visual impairment

• Pregnancy

• Expected surgery

• A chronic or acute health condition that affects their ability to perform basic mobility tasks or light-aerobic exercise (e.g. heart disease, injured or missing limb, etc.)

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Exercise

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Non-cue-contingent weekly incentives
Eligible to win $5 Amazon gift card conditional on completing a daily =10-minute walk at any time of day
• Cue-contingent weekly incentives
Eligible to win $5 Amazon gift card conditional on completing a daily =10-minute walk within a +/-1 hour window of the pre-specified time of their chosen contextual walking cue
• Habit Coaching
Received an instructional video on the benefits of contextual-cue-dependent habits and instructions on how to identify an optimal personalized cue that would consistently trigger their =10-minute walking habit
• App use instructions
Received a basic training with the StepUp app

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	Troy	New York

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Arizona State University

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

References & Publications (5)

Adriaanse MA, Gollwitzer PM, De Ridder DT, de Wit JB, Kroese FM. Breaking habits with implementation intentions: a test of underlying processes. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2011 Apr;37(4):502-13. doi: 10.1177/0146167211399102. Epub 2011 Feb 11. — View Citation

Lally, Phillippa, et al. 2010. "How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world." European journal of social psychology 40(6): 998-1009.

Stawarz, Cox, and Blandford. 2015. "Beyond self-tracking and reminders: designing smartphone apps that support habit formation." Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems, ACM.

Wood and Neal. 2016. "Healthy through habit: Interventions for initiating & maintaining health behavior change." Behavioral Science & Policy 2(1): 71-83.

Wood W, Neal DT. A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychol Rev. 2007 Oct;114(4):843-63. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Daily Step Count	Full study period analyses	8 weeks
Primary	Daily Step Count	Follow-up period	4 weeks
Secondary	Habitual daily walking	Whether walking occurred within +/- 1 hour of contextual cue; full study period	8 weeks
Secondary	Habitual daily walking	Whether walking occurred within +/- 1 hour of contextual cue; follow-up period	4 weeks
Secondary	10,000 daily step	Likelihood of reaching 10,000 daily steps, follow-up period	4 weeks