JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Employees in the office setting likely to remain physically inactive. Physical inactivity has become one of the major barriers to overcoming the risk of anxiety, depression, coronary heart disease, certain cancers, and type 2 diabetes. Currently, there is a gap in mobile health (mHealth) apps for workers to promote physical activity (PA) in the workplace. Studies on behaviour change theories have concluded that health applications generally lack the use of theoretical constructs.

Objective:

The objective was to study the feasibility of a persuasive application aimed at encouraging PA among employees and to understand the motivational aspects behind the implementation of mHealth apps among office workers.

Methods:

A four-week "between-subjects" study with a mixed method (quantitative and qualitative) design was conducted with office-based employees in four countries: (1) Oulu, Finland; (2) Carlow, Ireland; (3) London, United Kingdom; and (4) Dhaka, Bangladesh. The original study population of 220 participants (experimental group N=115, and control group N=105) consisted of working-age volunteers working in an office setting. Participants used two different interventions: the experimental group used an mHealth app for PA motivation, and the control group used a paper diary. The purpose was to motivate employees to engage in healthier behaviour regarding the promotion of PA in the workplace. A user-centered design (UCD) process was followed to design, develop, and evaluate the mHealth app, incorporating self-determination theory (SDT) and using game elements. The paper diary had no specific theory-driven approach, design technique, or game elements.

Results:

The compliance for the app usage remained relatively low: 27 participants (N=20 experimental; N=7 control group) completed the study. The results of the participants supported the original hypothesis that the mHealth app helped to overcome physical inactivity (P=0.033), i.e., promoting daily walking in the workplace. The mHealth app supported two of the basic SDT psychological needs – autonomy (P=0.004) and competence (P=0.014) – but not the needs of relatedness (P=0.535). Most participants may have been dropped out due to their age and profession, which did not influence them to use the mHealth app in the long run.

Conclusions:

The mHealth app with SDT-based podcasts resulted in motivating employees to overcome their physical inactivity in the workplace. However, the compliance of the app usage remained low. Future research should further develop the app based on the user feedback, and test it in a larger sample.