Workplace Wellness: Improving Your Experience at Work

University of Victoria

Status: Completed

Conditions: Obesity; Sedentary Behavior

Treatments: Behavioral: Instrumental condition; Behavioral: Nutrition condition; Behavioral: Affective condition; Behavioral: Self-regulation condition

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04082624

13-108

Details and patient eligibility

About

The primary objective of study was to compare affective (i.e., highlighted emotional benefits), instrumental (i.e., highlighted other health benefits), and self-regulation (i.e., demonstrated ways to plan, set goals, etc.) interventions in terms of their ability to motivate less sitting in the workplace. Research of this type is important because people sit for long periods of time at work which adversely affects their health and productivity.

It was hypothesized that the affective and self-regulation groups would sit less than the instrumental and control groups based on evidence indicating that affective attitude (i.e., emotional evaluation of the behavior) and self-regulation techniques tend to predict behavior.

Enrollment: 116 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• From a local workplace in Victoria
• Full-time employee (i.e., greater than 35 hours per week)
• Reported over 5.5 hours of sitting per day at work
• Agreed to attend the 3 intervention sessions

Exclusion criteria

• Not from a local workplace in Victoria
• Not a full-time employee (i.e., 35 hours or less per week)
• Reported less than 5.5 hours of sitting per day at work
• Did not agree to attend the 3 intervention sessions

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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116 participants in 4 patient groups

Nutrition condition

Active Comparator group

Description:

Received nutrition information such as the comparison of nutritional information between orange juice and soda pop. Received intervention following measurements at baseline, week 4, and week 8.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Nutrition condition

Affective condition

Experimental group

Description:

Learned about the affective benefits (e.g., less depression) of reduced office sitting time through taking active breaks. Received intervention following measurements at baseline, week 4, and week 8.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Affective condition

Instrumental condition

Experimental group

Description:

Learned about instrumental benefits such as the relationship between sitting and cardiovascular disease and absenteeism at work. Received intervention following measurements at baseline, week 4, and week 8.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Instrumental condition

Self-regulation condition

Experimental group

Description:

Learned how to self-monitor their sedentary behavior and active breaks. They also learned how to create prompts/cues (e.g., sticky note reminder), problem solve to overcome barriers, action plan (i.e., specifying when, where, and how to do the behavior), and set goals in order to be less sedentary according to SMART (i.e., specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-oriented) principles. Received intervention following measurements at baseline, week 4, and week 8.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Self-regulation condition