Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Jul 10, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 15, 2018 - Aug 30, 2018
Date Accepted: Mar 31, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Social Cognitive Theory and eHealth Design – A Scoping Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
When health intervention research is web-based, the impact on health outcomes depends on whether researchers are developing processes that embody social cognitive theory and support the participant’s self-efficacy needs.
Objective:
This study aims to review the literature on web-based health interventions for evidence of theory-based methodologies for online health intervention, focusing specifically on design features that enhance health outcomes through enhancement of self-efficacy, engagement, knowledge, and behavior change.
Methods:
The author conducted a systematic scoping review of studies of 161 web-based health interventions from published clinical trials using one or more social theories in their website design from January 2006-April 2016. An iterative approach was used in the selection of studies and data extraction.
Results:
Most of the published health intervention trials reviewed based study design on social cognitive theory. Relatively few researchers did not create web interactions that met the social and motivational needs of the participants sufficient to detect a significant statistical difference between groups. The vast majority relied on the use of the web as an informational aid and tailored content to the individual participant. A Digital Health Intervention Model was developed to provide a framework to enhance future web-based health intervention design and execution.
Conclusions:
Creating online environments where social presence and information richness as part of the overall design has several theoretical advantages. Online health intervention studies have generally reported medium sized effects, as well as high attrition rates. This review seeks to fill a research gap by linking social theory with web strategy to improve program delivery, sustainability, and outcomes.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.