Transtheoretical model for change in obese adolescents: MERC randomized clinical trial

Abstract

The randomized controlled trial evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change on anthropometric, metabolic and motivational outcomes in obese adolescents. A total of 135 male and female adolescents were randomized to two groups: intervention group ( n = 65) and control group ( n = 70). The adolescents were evaluated 1 week before the interventions began and at the end of 12 weeks. There was no statistically significant difference between groups in the outcome variables. Intervention group reported magnitude of effect more expressive on body mass index percentile, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, readiness to change diet and readiness to start exercise.

Transtheoretical model-based nutritional interventions in adolescents: a systematic review

“…Both of these articles were analyzed with the other studies on the same 6 intervention [25,27]. After the updated search, two more papers were included [29,30], totaling 15 articles and 12 interventions. All but one of the studies received funding, although this was not considered a potential added bias.…”

“…Four articles were classified as weak [16,18,24,30], five as moderate [17,21,23,26,29] and three as strong [19,24,27]. Most of the studies were rated as weak due to having a non-representative sample [16,18,24,30] and because blinding was not mentioned in the paper [16,24]. Further information about the articles' scores and classifications is available in the supplementary material.…”

“…One study recruited adolescents from youth service agencies [19,20], another recruited adolescents in search of nutritional treatment [29] and a third recruited adolescents through digital media, radio and television [30]. The remaining studies recruited adolescents from schools [16,17,18,21,22,23,24,25,26].…”

“…The majority of the studies targeted low-income populations [17,18,19,21,22,23,24,29], with three focusing on middle-income adolescents [16,25,26], one on African Americans [19] and two exclusively on girls [17,26]. Four studies focused on obese adolescents [21,26,29,30].…”

“…The sample sizes varied from 21 to 4158 participants. A total of seven randomized controlled trials [16,17,21,22,24,25,30] and five quasi-experimental studies [18,19,23,26,29] were included. All but four of the studies had two follow-up measurements, [16,21,25,29].…”