Schedule Intervention to Increase Sustainable Walking Activity in Midlife Working Adults

Brandeis University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Physical Activity

Treatments: Behavioral: Inconsistent contexts; Device: Accelerometer; Behavioral: Step goal; Behavioral: Consistent contexts

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03272438

BrandeisU

Details and patient eligibility

About

While people commonly understand that regular physical exercise conveys many health benefits, only 20% of U.S. adults take regular exercise and they have difficulty maintaining new healthy behaviors. The goal of this study is to use a planning intervention to help establish and maintain a daily step regimen in working midlife adults. The investigators will ask participants to plan when, where, and how to act on a daily walking goal in conjunction with a scheduling intervention to increase the chances that they will maintain this new regimen. The effectiveness of three different scheduling interventions will be compared.

Full description

While people commonly understand that regular physical exercise conveys many health benefits, only 20% of U.S. adults take regular exercise and they have difficulty maintaining new healthy behaviors. The goal of this study is to use a planning intervention to help establish and maintain a daily step regimen in working midlife adults. The investigators will ask participants to plan when, where, and how to act on a daily walking goal in conjunction with a scheduling intervention to increase the chances that they will maintain this new regimen. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: consistent schedule, inconsistent schedule, no schedule. All participants will be provided with an accelerometer to measure their daily activity and as a behavioral support for our intervention and they will be given a step goal. The goal given to each individual will be to increase immediately their daily steps to a level based on recommended guidelines (e.g., Hill, Wyatt, Reed, and Peters, 2003). The investigators will test which version of the scheduling intervention is most successful for increasing and maintaining step counts. It is predicted that participants in the consistent schedule condition will increase their step count more than those participants in the no schedule control condition, and that they will maintain this activity for a longer period after the intervention period is complete than those participants in the inconsistent schedule condition.

Enrollment: 149 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 40 to 65 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• currently working 3 or more days (or 24 hours or more) per week;
• physically minimally active (as determined using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ)

Exclusion criteria

• a recent (within the past 6 months) cardiovascular event, or fall.
• anyone who already exercises regularly, 3 times a week or more for at least 30 minutes, will be excluded

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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149 participants in 3 patient groups

No schedule control

Active Comparator group

Description:

This group will receive an accelerometer and daily step goal. They will monitor their steps over the 9 week duration of the study. They will also monitor their steps over the 9 week duration of the study. They will have the same level of contact as the other two conditions.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Step goal

Device: Accelerometer

Consistent schedule condition

Experimental group

Description:

This group will receive an accelerometer and daily step goal. They will monitor their steps over the 9 week duration of the study. They will have the same level of contact as the other two conditions. In addition they will plan when, where, and how they will take steps in consistent contexts, i.e., that are very similar from day to day.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Consistent contexts

Behavioral: Step goal

Device: Accelerometer

Inconsistent schedule condition

Active Comparator group

Description:

This group will receive an accelerometer and daily step goal. They will monitor their steps over the 9 week duration of the study. They will have the same level of contact as the other two conditions. In addition they will plan when, where, and how they will take steps in inconsistent contexts, i.e., that vary from day to day.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Step goal

Device: Accelerometer

Behavioral: Inconsistent contexts