JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Emotional well-being interventions lead to better mental and physical health. However, these interventions are mostly delivered on homogeneous samples, with few interventions large enough to examine whether key sociodemographic factors impact outcomes. Additionally, barriers to engagement include access and high participant burden. We developed a brief online intervention to address these barriers and tested the effects across sociodemographic groups.

Objective:

The study aims to examine the effectiveness of a brief, low-burden digital well-being intervention (Big Joy Project) in improving emotional well-being, reducing stress, and enhancing health-related outcomes across a diverse global sample. Moreover, it seems to evaluate how key sociodemographic factors, such as age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, financial strain, subjective social status, moderate intervention effects to identify which groups may benefit the most. Findings will inform the scalability of digital well-being interventions and their potential to impact public health.

Methods:

We built an online multi-component week-long emotional well-being intervention (The Big Joy project) designed to be a low burden on participants (with interventions that take 5-10 minutes per day). Using a global convenience sample, we tested the program’s efficacy on pre-post emotional well-being changes and self-reported health-related outcomes.

Results:

The sample (N=17,598) consisted of 169 countries with a broad representation across sociodemographic groups but was predominantly white, female, and high school or college educated. Participants reported an increase in emotional well-being (dz=0.48), positive emotions (dz=0.45), and happiness agency (dz=0.44) after the intervention with medium effect sizes. Further, participants reported a decrease in perceived stress (dz=-.35) and an increase in self-reported health (dz=0.07) and sleep quality (dz=0.15). There was a dose response across the outcomes. Those (n=385) who completed assessments only (but no practices) showed small benefits but with significantly smaller effect sizes across positive well-being outcomes. For example, those with no dosage had smaller effects on well-being (dz=0.19) than those who completed all seven practices (dz=0.57). There was a strong pattern of social disadvantage moderating outcomes. Groups with greater social disadvantage benefitted more across most outcomes. For example, those with lower education, greater financial strain, or lower subjective social status, and race/ethnic minorities (being black or Hispanic compared to white) all benefitted more across well-being outcomes. Further, younger people had greater increases in emotional well-being (B=1.16) compared to older people (B=0.94), and greater decreases in perceived stress (B=-1.04 vs. B=-0.89).

Conclusions:

A brief, low-intensity intervention showed meaningful improvements in well-being and reduced stress, like longer, more intensive digitally delivered well-being interventions. Sociodemographic groups who are at higher risk of poor mental health benefitted the most from the intervention, suggesting tremendous promise for scaling up toward a greater public health impact. Testing this intervention within a randomized controlled trial design will be important.