JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Although “push” components of mHealth interventions might be promising to bring habitual sedentary behavior into conscious awareness, their effect on the near-time, proximal outcome, being breaks in sedentary behavior immediately after receiving a push notification, is still unknown, especially in older adults.

Objective:

The aims of this study are to examine if older adults break their sedentary behavior immediately after receiving personalized haptic feedback on prolonged sedentary behavior, and if the percentage of breaks differed depending on the time of the day that the feedback was provided.

Methods:

A total of 26 Flemish older adults (mean age = 64.4 ± 3.8 years) wore a triaxial accelerometer, (Activator, PAL Technologies, Glasgow, UK), for three weeks. The accelerometer generated personalized haptic feedback by means of vibrations each time a participant was sitting for thirty uninterrupted minutes. Accelerometer data on sedentary behavior were used to estimate the proximal outcome, being sedentary behavior breaks immediately (within 1, 3 and 5 minutes) after receiving personalized haptic feedback. Generalized estimating equations were performed to investigate whether or not participants broke up their sedentary behavior immediately after receiving haptic feedback. A time-related variable was added to the model to investigate if the sedentary behavior breaks differed depending on the time of the day.

Results:

A total of 2601 vibrations were provided to the participants during the three-week intervention period. Fourteen, twenty-one, and twenty-eight percent of the vibrations resulted in a sedentary behavior break respectively within one, three and five minutes. Whereas the one-minute interval did not reveal significant differences in the percentage of breaks depending on the time by which the haptic feedback was provided, the three and five-minutes interval did show significant differences in the percentage of breaks depending on the time by which the haptic feedback was provided. Concretely, the percentage of sedentary behavior breaks was significantly higher if personalized haptic feedback was provided between 12 and 3 p.m., compared to if the feedback was provided between 6 and 9 a.m. (OR[95%CI]: 1.58[1.01;2.47] within three-minutes and 1.78[1.11;2.84] within five minutes).

Conclusions:

The majority of haptic vibrations – especially those in the morning – did not result in a break in older adults’ sedentary behavior. As such, simply bringing habitual sedentary behavior into conscious awareness seems to be insufficient to target sedentary behavior. More research is needed to optimize “push” components in interventions aimed at the reduction of older adults’ sedentary behavior.