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ExerciseNCT04691596

Promoting Contextually Cued PA Habits

A study testing Non-cue-contingent weekly incentives, Cue-contingent weekly incentives and Habit Coaching in people with Exercise, run by Arizona State University at 1 site in United States.

Completed

Finished. The study has ended and is not enrolling. Results may be posted on the official record.

Official record
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Trial summary

The primary goal of this two-month pilot study is to measure the behavioral change induced by targeted habit formation reminders that are surfaced via an iPhone app and financial incentives that were offered conditional on using a personalized contextual cue for a daily walking habit. Read more about this study

Who is it for?
Ages 18 to 65 yearsHealthy volunteers can take part
Conditions the study is for
Exercise
What is being tested?
Non-cue-contingent weekly incentives, Cue-contingent weekly incentives and Habit Coaching
Could I receive a placebo?
No, everyone receives an active treatment
How many people
137 participants
Where
1 siteUnited States
Study dates
28 Feb 2019to 21 Aug 2020
Phase
Interventional
Are there results?
None posted in the registry

Key requirements

Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.

  • Ages 18 to 65 years
  • All sexes
  • Healthy volunteers accepted
  • Adult, Older adult

Who may be able to join

  • 18+ years of age
  • Have an existing wellness goal related to increasing physical activity
  • Access to an iPhone with iOS 10 or above (in order to use the app)
  • Proficiency in speaking and reading English

Who cannot join

  • Have a major visual impairment
  • Pregnancy
  • Expected surgery
  • A chronic or acute health condition that affects their ability to perform basic mobility tasks or light-aerobic exercise (e.g. heart disease, injured or missing limb, etc.)

Trial locations and contacts

1 site in 1 country.

United States1 site

  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

    Troy, New York, 12180

Other trials in United States

About this study

Official title: Promoting Contextually Cued Physical Activity Habits: A Pilot Study Using Cue-Contingent Financial Incentives for Daily Walking

The primary goal of this two-month pilot study is to measure the behavioral change induced by targeted habit formation reminders that are surfaced via an iPhone app and financial incentives that were offered conditional on using a personalized contextual cue for a daily walking habit. The data and user feedback collected during this study will also be used to optimize the design and content of the iPhone app, which will be tested in future, larger scale experimental research.

Read the detailed description

Subjects for this research are recruited on campus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the State University of New York at Albany, and their participation was incentivized. After meeting the eligibility criterion (including have at least some intrinsic motivation for increasing physical activity), downloading the project's iPhone app, and signing the project consent form, all participants will have their step count data recorded for an 8-week study period.

Existing interventions that have successfully improved study participants' health-related behaviors typically find that behavioral changes do not persist beyond 3 months after the intervention period. Fortunately, novel habit formation interventions from the psychology literature offer the potential for building long-term behavioral change and avoiding the common "relapse triangles" observed in these existing behavioral interventions. These new methods are based on the theory that habits are formed through the repetition of the same behavior in response to a stable, environmental cue. After an initial period of repetition, automaticity is formed, and the behavioral response becomes more effortlessly/unconsciously induced by the environmental cue. Behavioral reminders that reinforce a specific behavioral routine-environmental cue pair have been shown to support this initial period of habit formation; however, given the individualized nature of these reminders, a generalizable intervention method has not been developed and empirically tested. This research will use an iPhone app to examine the role of both general informational on contextually cued habits and the use of personalized reminders and financial incentives for using a daily physical activity contextual cue on the persistence of physical activity behavior after the intervention tools are withdrawn.

Conditions
Exercise
Being tested
Non-cue-contingent weekly incentives, Cue-contingent weekly incentives, Habit Coaching, App use instructions
Keywords
Physical activity, Financial incentives, mHealth
Medical subject headings
Motor Activity

What participants receive

What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.

  • Non-cue-contingent weekly incentivesBehavioural

    Eligible to win $5 Amazon gift card conditional on completing a daily ≥10-minute walk at any time of day

  • Cue-contingent weekly incentivesBehavioural

    Eligible to win $5 Amazon gift card conditional on completing a daily ≥10-minute walk within a +/-1 hour window of the pre-specified time of their chosen contextual walking cue

  • Habit CoachingBehavioural

    Received an instructional video on the benefits of contextual-cue-dependent habits and instructions on how to identify an optimal personalized cue that would consistently trigger their ≥10-minute walking habit

  • App use instructionsBehavioural

    Received a basic training with the StepUp app

Study groups in NCT04691596
Study groupRoleWhat they receive
Control GroupActive comparatorOne fourth of participants were assigned to the Control Group, and received a basic training with the StepUp app and were asked to contact the study team with any problems or questions they encountered during the eight-week study period. No other intervention tools or app reminders were provided to the Control Group.
Receives: Behavioral: App use instructions
Treatment Group 1ExperimentalAdditionally eligible to receive weekly $5 Amazon gift cards over the first four weeks of the study for performing a ≥10-minute walk (i.e. non-cue-contingent incentives)
Receives: Behavioral: Non-cue-contingent weekly incentives; Behavioral: App use instructions
Treatment Group 2ExperimentalReceived an instructional video on the benefits of contextual-cue-dependent habits and instructions on how to identify an optimal personalized cue that would consistently trigger their ≥10-minute walking habit, then they were similarly eligible weekly for $5 Amazon gift cards over the first four weeks conditional on completing a ≥10-minute walk at any time of day (i.e. non-cue-contingent incentives)
Receives: Behavioral: Non-cue-contingent weekly incentives; Behavioral: Habit Coaching; Behavioral: App use instructions
Treatment Group 3ExperimentalReceived an instructional video on the benefits of contextual-cue-dependent habits and instructions on how to identify an optimal personalized cue that would consistently trigger their ≥10-minute walking habit, then they were eligible weekly for $5 Amazon gift cards over the first four weeks conditional on completing a ≥10-minute walk at any the pre-specified time of their chosen contextual cue (i.e. cue-contingent incentives)
Receives: Behavioral: Cue-contingent weekly incentives; Behavioral: Habit Coaching; Behavioral: App use instructions

What is being measured

The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.

  1. Daily Step Count

    Full study period analyses

    Measured: 8 weeks

  2. Daily Step Count

    Follow-up period

    Measured: 4 weeks

Secondary outcomes (3)

  1. Habitual daily walking

    Whether walking occurred within +/- 1 hour of contextual cue; full study period

    Measured: 8 weeks

  2. Habitual daily walking

    Whether walking occurred within +/- 1 hour of contextual cue; follow-up period

    Measured: 4 weeks

  3. 10,000 daily step

    Likelihood of reaching 10,000 daily steps, follow-up period

    Measured: 4 weeks

Timeline

From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.

  1. First posted31 Dec 2020
  2. Study start28 Feb 2019
  3. Primary completion21 Aug 2019
  4. Study completion21 Aug 2020

Resources

More details

For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.

Study design
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase N/A
Primary purpose
Prevention
Allocation
Randomised
Intervention model
Parallel groups
Masking
Single blind
Who is masked
Participant
Enrolment
137 participants (actual)
IDs, dates and publications
ClinicalTrials.gov ID
NCT04691596
Sponsor's protocol ID
1698
Status last verified
Jul 2023
First submitted
28 Dec 2020
Last updated
20 Jul 2023
Results posted
No
Data monitoring committee
No
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
Individual data sharing
No

Publications

  • Stawarz, Cox, and Blandford. 2015. "Beyond self-tracking and reminders: designing smartphone apps that support habit formation." Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems, ACM.

  • Lally, Phillippa, et al. 2010. "How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world." European journal of social psychology 40(6): 998-1009.

  • Wood W, Neal DT. A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychol Rev. 2007 Oct;114(4):843-63. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843.

    PubMed 17907866

  • Wood and Neal. 2016. "Healthy through habit: Interventions for initiating & maintaining health behavior change." Behavioral Science & Policy 2(1): 71-83.

  • Adriaanse MA, Gollwitzer PM, De Ridder DT, de Wit JB, Kroese FM. Breaking habits with implementation intentions: a test of underlying processes. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2011 Apr;37(4):502-13. doi: 10.1177/0146167211399102. Epub 2011 Feb 11.

    PubMed 21317315

  • Stecher C, Chen CH, Codella J, Cloonan S, Hendler J. Combining anchoring with financial incentives to increase physical activity: a randomized controlled trial among college students. J Behav Med. 2024 Oct;47(5):751-769. doi: 10.1007/s10865-024-00492-4. Epub 2024 May 5.

    PubMed 38704776

Questions about this trial

What is this clinical trial studying?

A study testing Non-cue-contingent weekly incentives, Cue-contingent weekly incentives and Habit Coaching in people with Exercise, run by Arizona State University at 1 site in United States.

The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.

Who may be eligible to take part?

The sponsor lists 4 inclusion and 4 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.

Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?

The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 20 Jul 2023. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.

Where is the study taking place?

The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.

What are the possible benefits and risks?

They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.

Are results available for this study?

The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.

How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?

The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.

What does the primary outcome measure?

Daily Step Count (time frame: 8 weeks). The study lists 2 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.

Where can I read the original study information?

On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT04691596, which also lists 6 linked publications.

Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?

No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.

How often is this information updated?

AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 20 Jul 2023.

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