Physical Activity Intervention Among College Students

Texas Tech University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Physical Activity

Treatments: Behavioral: Activity tracker

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03061357

505314

Details and patient eligibility

About

This project was to examine the effects of incorporating modern wearable technology into the credit-based Physical Activity Instructional Program for promoting habitual levels of physical activity among college students.

Full description

This project was a cluster randomized trial examining the effects of utilizing a wearable activity tracker in a credit-based Physical Activity Instructional Program on promoting habitual levels of physical activity (PA) in college students.

The project was conducted in a large public university located in the mid-south region of the US. The university offers more than one hundred 1-credit hour PAIPs per academic semester. Considering the pilot nature of the study, the target PAIPs was limited to those meeting the following inclusion criteria: 1) PAIP with a size of 30 students that generally show an approximately equal gender distribution; and 2) PAIP that delivers the principles and practice of individually tailored habitual activity plans. The investigators randomly selected 14 eligible PAIPs and assigned them into intervention (k=7) and control (k=7) groups. The outcome measures of interests were the changes in objectively and subjectively measured physical activity over an academic semester.

Enrollment: 187 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• healthy college students who were enrolled in 1-credit physical activity instruction programs.

Exclusion criteria

• did not wish to participate;
• have currently used their own wearable activity tracker;
• indicated any major physical, psychiatric, or cardiovascular-related problems diagnosed by a physician.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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187 participants in 2 patient groups

Activity tracker group

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in intervention arm were provided with a small and lightweight activity tracker, Misfit Flash (Misfit Wearables Co., Burlingame, CA), that can be worn with a clasp or watch band. A handout detailing the step-by-step instructions for utilizing the activity tracker with Misfit App on their smartphone was provided. There was no intervention component mandated in the curriculum of intervention PAIP courses; rather, participants were continuously encouraged by the instructors to track their activity levels and use all the features in Misfit App on a daily basis as they learned health benefits of PA and as to how to develop individualized, life-long PA plan during the course of semester.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Activity tracker

Control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in control arm did not receive any additional instructions other than the scheduled class activities based on the standardized core-curriculum of PAIP