Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 14, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 14, 2018 - Dec 9, 2018
Date Accepted: Jul 23, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
A web-based appearance intervention to promote sleep: Randomized controlled trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Receiving insufficient sleep has wide-ranging consequences for health and well-being. Although educational programs have been developed to promote sleep, these have had limited success in extending sleep duration. To address this gap, we developed a web-based program emphasizing how physical appearances change with varying amounts of sleep.
Objective:
The aims of this study were to evaluate: (1) whether participants can detect changes in appearances as a function of sleep, and (2) whether this intervention can alter habitual sleep patterns.
Methods:
We conducted a 5-week, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial amongst 70 habitual short sleepers (healthy adults who reported having <7 hours of sleep routinely). Upon study enrolment, participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either standard information or an appearance-based intervention. Both groups received educational materials about sleep, but those in the appearance group also viewed a website containing digitally-edited photographs that showed how they would look with varying amounts of sleep. As outcome variables, sleep duration was monitored objectively via actigraphy (at baseline, and at post-intervention weeks 1 and 4), and participants completed a measure of sleep hygiene (at baseline, and at post-intervention weeks 2, 4, and 5). For each outcome, we ran intention-to-treat analyses using linear mixed-effects models.
Results:
In total, 35 participants were assigned to each group. Validating the intervention, participants in the appearance group: (i) were able to identify what they looked like at baseline, and (ii) judged that they would look more attractive with a longer sleep duration (P < .001). In turn, this translated to changes in sleep hygiene: whereas participants in the appearance group showed improvements following the intervention (P = .003), those in the information group did not (P = .66). Finally, there was no significant effect of group nor interaction of group and time on actigraphy-measured sleep duration (smallest P = .26).
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that an appearance-based intervention – while not sufficient as a standalone – could have an adjunctive role in sleep promotion. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02491138
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
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