Motivating reflection about health within the family: the use of goal setting and tailored feedback

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that obesity is a serious health issue. Despite governments' campaigns and initiatives to raise the level of awareness, the proportion of adults classified as overweight or obese is increasing steadily. As a result, there has been a growing interest in Human Computer Interaction and User Modelling to study how to support health behaviour change. While most of the work to date has focused on individuals, medical research has shown that family engagement plays an important role on health behaviour. To consider the family context, we are developing technology that facilitates health discussions and encourages supportive behaviour within the family. We investigate how to motivate members of a family to reflect upon their lifestyle and think of ways in which they can make it healthier. In particular, we have looked at whether providing explicit goals and tailored feedback can have an impact. During a two week trial with families in which we explored these strategies, we found that setting a collective goal for the family influenced how much the family as a whole contributed, and that feedback increased significantly mothers' participation. Our results also suggest that establishing a family goal encouraged families to work together and, in particular, to help each other find ways to be healthier. Finally, 76% of participants reported discussing the task with someone in their family, and, also discussing it together as a family (57%).

Preface to the special issue on personalization and behavior change

“…-Tailoring feedback to comparative performance (Colineau and Paris 2011) and adapting performance feedback and emotional support to the user's personality (Dennis et al 2013). -Adaptive incentive mechanisms (Cheng and Vassileva 2006).…”

Preface to the special issue on personalization for e-health

“…More specifically, from the e-Health consumer perspective, Camerini and colleagues (2011) and Colineau and Paris (2011) present work in line with the e-Health stated goal of enabling people to take more control of their healthcare and wellbeing. Camerini et al's contribution further advances work on patient information and support, as they describe a system that presents personalised exercise videos for people with Fibromyalgia.…”

“…They range from "classic" patient support and empowerment (Camerini et al 2011) to support to the larger patient social community (family and friends) (Colineau and Paris 2011), and, from the medical perspective, from aid for just-in-time decision (Chittaro et al 2011;Lindgren 2011) to a more efficient use of the resources (human time in this case) (Cohen 2011).…”

Peer-Based Intelligent Tutoring Systems: A Corpus-Oriented Approach

“…There is other work in the area of E-Health that has demonstrated the importance of personalized content delivery and of leveraging social networks as part of that learning [21,22]. This work tends to focus on promoting healthier lifestyles by encouraging reflection and discussions within the family through the use of a collaborative platform.…”