Affective Responses in Mountain Hiking

Universitaet Innsbruck

Status: Completed

Conditions: Affect

Treatments: Behavioral: walking; Device: Treadmill

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02853760

ARMH

Details and patient eligibility

About

Using a within-subject design, 42 healthy participants were randomly exposed to three different conditions: outdoor mountain hiking, indoor treadmill walking, and sedentary control situation (3.5 hours each). Measures included the Feeling Scale, Felt Arousal Scale and a Mood Survey Scale. Univariate ANOVAs were used to analyse differences between the conditions.

Enrollment: 47 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 70 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• voluntary participation

Exclusion criteria

• pregnancy
• breast-feeding
• chronic or acute diseases (already existing or diagnosed during the study)
• age below 18 and above 70 years
• unable to be physically active assessed by the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (Shephard, Thomas, & Weller, 1991)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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47 participants in 3 patient groups

Outdoor mountain hiking (M)

Experimental group

Description:

First part of the intervention: an uphill walking phase on single trails and forest roads in a sparse forest with view on the mountainous region around Innsbruck for 6 km in around 1.5 hours together with the test leader. Regarding the walking intensity, the participants were instructed to choose a "brisk without overspending" pace (average speed: 4 km/h). In the second part of the intervention, the participants were walking downhill on the same track for around 70 minutes back to the starting point to respond to the post-test (average speed: 5.2 km/h).

Treatment:

Behavioral: walking

Indoor treadmill walking (T)

Active Comparator group

Description:

To ensure that all physical parameters were simultaneous to the outdoor mountain hiking condition, the distance, the difference in height, the average inclination of the track, and the time needed for the outdoor mountain hiking situation were measured in a pilot study. First part: uphill walking, inclination: 10%, time: 1.5 hours, and speed: 4 km/h (resulting in 600 m difference in height). In accordance to possible differences in outdoor speed, the participants were allowed to change the treadmill's speed in a small range (3.8 to 4.2 km/h) to adapt to the wording "brisk without overspending". Second part of the intervention contained 70 minutes of level walking on the same treadmills (5.2 km/h, 6km).

Treatment:

Behavioral: walking

Device: Treadmill

Sedentary control condition (C)

No Intervention group

Description:

The sedentary control situation was located in a quiet room at the university with access to computers. The participants were allowed to use the computers, to read, and to talk, but had to remain in a sedentary position. To control for possible differences in affective response due to the daytime, the sedentary control condition contained the same timing of the measurements than the intervention condition. Sociodemographic data were collected for 5 to 10 minutes in this condition using a web-based questionnaire.