NCT02958189

Tweet4Wellness: An Online Virtual Support Group for Promoting Increased Physical Activity

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 45 (actual)
• Sponsor: Stanford University · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to determine whether a Twitter-based intervention with a private, online support group can significantly increase number of walking steps compared to self-monitoring of physical activity alone or a control group in sedentary women at a women's heart clinic.

Detailed description

Sedentary behavior is a risk factor for heart disease, independent of meeting physical activity guidelines. Tweet4Wellness is an innovative light physical activity, specifically walking, intervention which randomly assigns participants to a 25-person private, online support group that will receive daily, theory-based messages as peer-to-peer discussion prompts. Many text-based interventions do not base the intervention text messages in behavior change theory, but this study will base the daily messages in the behavior change theories such as implementation intentions, social support, mindfulness, and social learning theory. The trial will be conducted over a 6-month periods. For the first 3 months, there will be 2 groups: Group 1 will receive the Twitter intervention and a "Fitbit" triaxial pedometer to track their steps throughout the day; Group 2 will receive the Fitbit pedometer only. For the second 3 months: Group 1 an Group 2 will track their physical activity with Fitbit only.

Conditions

• Physical Activity
• Social Media

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Tweet4Wellness	A daily, behavior change theory-based intervention message is sent to a private, 25-person online Twitter-support group to prompt peer-to-peer discussion. Participants receive individual text messages to encourage group participation (e.g. 'thank you for participating' or 'please participate tomorrow'). Participants also receive weekly individual messages giving them daily step goals for the week based on their previous week's daily step average, recorded from Fitbit.
BEHAVIORAL	Self-monitoring	A Fitbit is provided to the group which tracks participants' daily steps.

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-06-20
• Primary completion: 2019-12-15
• Completion: 2019-12-20
• First posted: 2016-11-08
• Last updated: 2020-04-10

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States