Educational Intervention by Computer in Childhood Asthma: A Randomized Clinical Trial Testing the Use of a New Teaching Intervention in Childhood Asthma

Abstract

To affect asthma-related knowledge, behavior, and morbidity, researchers tested a new educational intervention for children with asthma: an asthma-specific computer game called Asthma Command, which was specifically designed for this study. Sixty-five children with moderately severe asthma were randomly assigned to one of two groups, and 54 completed the study. Both groups were seen approximately six times during the 1 year of the study. Control subjects (n = 29) played routine computer games. Experimental subjects (n = 25) played Asthma Command. Compared with children in the control group, experimental subjects showed improvement in knowledge about asthma (P < .001), behavior related to the management of asthma (P < .008), and a trend toward the reduction of acute visits due to asthma (P < .13). Children in the experimental group also scored higher on the assessment of behaviors related to the management of asthma that were specifically addressed by the intervention provided by Asthma Command (P < .01). Differences between the control and experimental groups showed a greater improvement in the experimental group in 21 (84%) of the 25 outcome variables in the study (P = .004, Sign test). The study indicates that an asthma-specific computer game can significantly affect knowledge and behavior and may potentially affect morbidity in childhood asthma.

Serious Gaming for Behaviour Change: A Systematic Review

“…Indeed, numerous games using the term 'Health Education' have been created as interventions to influence players towards healthy performance. Early research showed positive results when they utilised health educational computer games for enhancing the performance of adolescents [173,174].…”

Effectiveness of technological interventions to improve healthcare communication with children with long-term conditions: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

“…The 19 included studies enrolled a total of 1995 participants [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. Of the papers that reported sufficient demographic data, the mean age was 12.4 years (range 3-18 years) and 55.6% of participants were male.…”

“…Each study's methodology was appraised as low risk, some concerns about risk or high risk of bias (Supplementary File 5). Four studies were assessed as carrying a low risk of bias [42,44,46,47]. Those at higher risk of bias were commonly due to deviations in the delivery of the intervention, participant attrition and variable blinding of participants and researchers (Figure 2).…”

“…Interventions identified in this review were divided into four groups: interactive websites (n = 7), character-based video games (n = 6), text-messaging (n = 3) and other (n = 3). Most interventions were accessed by participants in their own home, however two were delivered at outpatient clinics [37,44], one was accessed at the participants' schools [42] and one at a community health centre [47].…”

Roles of Serious Game in Diabetes Patient Education

“…Much research in health-related video games focuses on children as their target sample group (e.g., Baranowski et al, 2003; Capruciu, 2012; D. H. Rubin et al, 1986).…”