- Title
- Mobile health application for promoting health behaviours and health-specific self-efficacy in young people
- Creator
- Tebbutt, Bree
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- Masters Coursework - Master of Clinical Psychology (MClinPsych)
- Description
- Scope: Young people’s unhealthy lifestyle behaviours increase the risk of developing a chronic disease in adulthood. Australian young people, engage in three or more unhealthy lifestyle behaviours (e.g., smoking tobacco, excessive consumption of alcohol, poor dietary intake and/or inactivity). These unhealthy lifestyle behaviours are associated with an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes, and cancer, later in life. Furthermore, individual health-specific self-efficacy is purported to be associated with this relationship by effecting influence on the young persons’ decision to engage in unhealthy behaviours. Thus, young people are a potential cohort to evoke change and promote healthier lifestyle behaviours in adulthood. Given that young people are high consumers of technology, Smartphones and their mobile health applications, may be an appropriate tool to facilitate such health behaviour change. Purpose: Mobile health applications (M-app) have limited evidence to support their efficacy in evoking health behaviour change. This secondary analysis of the MyHealthPA M-app pilot study data (see Thornton, Kay-Lambkin, Tebbutt, Hanstock, & Baker, in preparation, for review), aimed to examine user health-specific self-efficacy in the context of engagement with MyHealthPA, and therefore, its efficacy in affecting health behaviour change in young adults. Methodology: Design: The current study was nested within a larger pilot study (see Thornton et al, in preparation) utilising an online questionnaire method, including; a baseline, post-intervention (8-weeks), and follow-up (12-weeks) online assessment. Participants. One hundred and two young people (age range 18-25 years, M=21.64, SD=2.20) were screened for inclusion. Screened participants were excluded if; not between the ages of 18 to 25 years, resided outside of Australia, English was a second language, and were unable to access a Smartphone with Internet availability. Of these, 28 (27.5%) commenced the study at baseline, 12 (11.8%) completed the intervention phase, and 6 (5.9%) remained in the study at follow-up. Method: At baseline, pre - post intervention the online questionnaire incorporated measures of health behaviours (e.g., Alcohol, Nicotine smoking, Diet, Physical Exercise; see Appendix F, Table 1.), mental health (e.g., Mood screener), and health-specific self-efficacy, as adapted from Schwarzer and Renner’s (2013) Health-Specific Self-efficacy scales (see appendix F, Table 2). During the intervention phase, participants were provided access to MyHealthPA for an 8-week period, enabling them to set healthy lifestyle goals, track or diarise current behaviours and mood, as well as, view their progress towards set goals (Thornton, Kay-Lambkin, & Baker, 2016). MyHealthPA also encouraged participants to record their engagement in health behaviours such as; smoking, alcohol consumption, fruit and vegetable intake, physical activity, substance withdrawal symptoms, adverse symptoms, and medication compliance. To maintain participant engagement, telephone calls, emails and text-messaging reminders at each time point were sent, with each phase offering the additional incentive of an entry into a prize draw to win an iPad. Results: MyHealthPA was effective in engaging young people who exhibited higher engagement in health risk behaviours (i.e., higher life risk index [LRI]). At baseline, individuals with a higher LRI, used the M-app more often, accessed more pages within the M-app, and produced more diary entries. At the end of treatment and follow-up time points, there was no significant relationship found between engagement with MyHealthPA and health behaviour change. However, at follow-up, there was a small negative correlation between high M-app engagement and LRI. Results: investigating self-efficacy revealed, where participants exhibited low alcohol specific self-efficacy, they to set more goals in MyHealthPA, and had improved alcohol behaviours by the end of treatment. Additionally, for participants with higher physical health specific self-efficacy; greater physical behaviour change at follow-up, a lowered LRI, and a reduced level of psychological distress at end of treatment, was exhibited. Finally, diet specific self-efficacy was also positively associated with greater change in LRI at follow-up. Smoking self-efficacy was not calculated as this sample only had two self-reported smokers. General Conclusions and Implications: MyHealthPA shows promise among a small sample of young adults in promoting health behaviour change in behaviours associated with high risk of developing chronic disease. MyHealthPA appears to be beneficial for individuals who are engaging in unhealthy behaviours at higher risk levels as defined by their LRI. Self-efficacy was associated with health behaviour change, but not engagement, however, this may have been associated with the type of self-efficacy measure applied in this study (i.e., self-efficacy for engaging with mobile technology was not measured), or the high rate of participant attrition, which limited the capacity to analyse data effectively. Further trials utilising MyHealthPA in a M-app format (see Thornton et al., in preparation), will elucidate current findings, generalisability, and limitations. Furthermore, additional trials within clinical populations, measuring self-efficacy outcome expectancies, and the incorporation of an eCommunity, behaviour modelling, and planning tools, could bolster the evidence for using MyHealthPA for health-behaviour change in the future.
- Subject
- mobile health; young people; health behaviour change
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1385095
- Identifier
- uon:32167
- Rights
- Copyright 2018 Bree Tebbutt
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 188 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |