Effects of an Internet Physical Activity Intervention in Adults With Metabolic Syndrome

Abstract

The Internet is a relatively new method of delivering strategies for health behavior change. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of delivering a physical activity intervention by the Internet to improve outcomes in adults with the metabolic syndrome. Twenty-two participants (16 males; 6 females) were recruited from a cardiology clinic database, age range 32-66 years. Participants were randomly assigned to the Internet intervention (n = 12) or the usual care ( n = 10) group. The mean total dose, in terms of the time the intervention Web site was accessed was 2 hours over 6 weeks, which was greater than the time spent delivering usual care. Overall, participants' evaluations of the Internet intervention were positive. The costs of development and delivery of the Internet intervention were less than that of a consultation and follow-up in the cardiology clinic for this sample. The Internet intervention appears feasible for testing in a larger study.

Web-Based Physical Activity Interventions for Older Adults: A Review

“…Out of fifteen studies, only five specifically aim to investigate the efficacy of the interventions in increasing the level of physical activity among participants [12,13,14,15,16]. Another six studies aim to investigate the effectiveness of design components in encouraging physical activity [17,18,19,20,21,22].…”

“…Examples of objective measurements used in these identified studies include the use of RT3 accelerometer [12], ActiPED pedometer [17] or ankle/wrist-work accelerometer [16]. Subjective measurements used, on the other hand, include self-reported 7-Day Physical Activity Recall (7-D PAR) [12,19], Dutch Short Questionnaire to Assess Health Enhancing Physical Activity (SQUASH) [23,24,25] and validated Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE) [14]. Table 1.…”

“…Aims Physical Activity Measurements [12] To determine the feasibility of delivering a physical activity intervention via the Internet on a desktop computer to increase physical activity and ultimately to improve outcomes in the metabolic syndrome population 1) 7-Day Physical Activity Recall (7-D PAR). 2) RT3 accelerometer data: to determine total energy expenditure and to evaluating the validity of selfreported 7-D PAR.…”

“…Six of these studies focus only on an older adult population [14,15,16,17,21,23], while three physical activity interventions developed for a general population [12,19,22]. The remaining six studies only described physical activity as sub-components of the interventions, as these studies involved interventions that were not mainly developed to enhance physical activity but to encourage weight loss [26], fall prevention [18], weight maintenance [13], general health assessment [20,24] and health behaviour change [25].…”

“…Out of nine interventions with physical activity as the main component, three studies utilized objective physical activity measurements [16,17,21], four studies utilize subjective measurement [15,16,19,23], while two studies [12,14] utilized both types of measurement. Meanwhile, all of the remaining six studies with physical activity as subcomponents of the interventions only used subjective measurements such as self-reported questionnaires to measure physical activity outcome [13,18,20,26,24,25].…”