Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Apr 2, 2021
Date Accepted: Aug 25, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Nov 23, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Feasibility, Usability, and Acceptability of an Immersive Virtual Reality Boxing Game-based Intervention on Anxiety, Depression, and Perceived Stress for University Students: A Pilot Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of students suffering from depression, anxiety, and perceived stress. A solution that has been increasingly used for improving health and wellbeing is exergaming. The effect and acceptability of exergames have been studied widely but mostly with older adults. Their feasibility, usability, and acceptability by university students, especially for immersive virtual reality (iVR) exergames, remain unexplored.
Objective:
This study aims to explore the feasibility of a six-week iVR exergame-based intervention in reducing anxiety, depression, and perceived stress for university students and examine the usability and acceptability of such games.
Methods:
A total of 31 students were recruited to participate in a 6-week study, where they needed to play a boxing-style iVR exergame called FitXR twice a week, 30 minutes per session.
Results:
Fifteen participants completed the 6-week study. Our results suggested that participants’ depression scores were reduced significantly from 8.33 (SD=5.98) to 5.40 (SD=5.14) after the intervention (P=.012). In addition, most participants (93.3%) believed the iVR exergame has good usability. Furthermore, most participants (93.3%) were satisfied with the iVR gameplay experience and would play the iVR exergame again in the future. Eleven participants (73.3%) would recommend the iVR exergame to their friends.
Conclusions:
Results gained from the study show that the iVR exergame has good usability, is highly acceptable, and has the potential to reduce depression among university students.
Citation
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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.