Victoria University, Business School, 300 Flinders St, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia.
Victoria University, Mitchell Institute for Education and Health Policy, 300 Queen St, Melbourne, VIC, 3000, Australia.
BMC Public Health. 2022 Dec 21;22(1):2402. doi: 10.1186/s12889-022-14885-0.
Developing strategies to change health behaviour is one of the biggest challenges of health promotion programs. Social media, as a popular and innovative communication and education tool, offers opportunities to modify health behaviour. While literature on using social media for health promotion campaigns is growing, there is a need to evaluate the approaches used to change health behaviour, rather than only creating awareness.
The paper reviewed the literature on application of social media in health promotion campaigns with a particular focus on the methodologies used in assessing the outcome of the programs for behaviour change. This fills the void in collating evidence to extend health promotion campaigns to effect sustainable behavioural change.
Peer-reviewed articles were identified through multiple science databases. A systematic electronic search was conducted to retrieve review and original papers published between January 2010 and April 2022. The titles and abstracts of the articles were screened according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. All authors independently read the full texts and discussed them to reach a consensus about the themes. Concept mapping was used to present results from analysis of the included papers.
Of the 674 citations, 28 (4.1%) studies were included in this review. The methodology approaches of 18 (2.7%) papers, that aimed to evaluate the impact of social media in health promotion campaigns towards behaviour change, were analysed further using concept mapping. The results showed that 10 studies (55.5%) adopted quantitative methods and five studies (27.7%) used mixed methods and three studies (16.6%) used qualitative methods. Facebook and YouTube were used more for intervention purposes to change health behaviour. Twitter and Instagram were used more to observe the trend of changes in health behaviour. Six studies (33.3%) adopted Social Cognitive Theory and one study (5.5%) applied the Transtheoretical Model as the framework to evaluate the outcome. Overall, the results show that though social media has potential in promoting behaviour change, the estimation of this change in long-term lies outside the scope of social media health campaigns. This is also reflected in the methodologies used in existing studies to assess such sustainable changes. The employed measures usually target immediate behaviour or social media engagement rather than addressing the change on a behavioural level.
Evaluating the performance of social media campaigns to promote health behaviours towards a sustainable outcome is a complex process. Emerging research is focused on evaluating the potential of social media as an opportunity to create awareness. Such measures require less effort in quantifying and isolating the effect. The design of the campaigns is required to be aligned in relation to stages of the behaviour change. The study provides suggestions on how this can be achieved.
制定改变健康行为的策略是健康促进计划面临的最大挑战之一。社交媒体作为一种流行且创新的沟通和教育工具，为改变健康行为提供了机会。虽然关于利用社交媒体开展健康促进活动的文献越来越多，但需要评估用于改变健康行为的方法，而不仅仅是提高认识。
本文综述了社交媒体在健康促进活动中的应用文献，特别关注用于评估项目对行为改变结果的方法。这填补了将健康促进活动扩展到产生可持续行为改变的证据综合方面的空白。
通过多个科学数据库确定了同行评审文章。进行了系统的电子检索，以检索 2010 年 1 月至 2022 年 4 月期间发表的综述和原始论文。根据纳入和排除标准筛选文章的标题和摘要。所有作者均独立阅读全文并进行讨论，以就主题达成共识。概念图用于呈现纳入论文分析结果。
在 674 条引文，28 篇（4.1%）研究被纳入本综述。进一步分析了 18 篇（2.7%）旨在评估社交媒体在健康促进活动中对行为改变影响的方法论文的方法方法。结果表明，10 项研究（55.5%）采用定量方法，5 项研究（27.7%）采用混合方法，3 项研究（16.6%）采用定性方法。Facebook 和 YouTube 更多地用于干预目的，以改变健康行为。Twitter 和 Instagram 更多地用于观察健康行为变化趋势。6 项研究（33.3%）采用社会认知理论，1 项研究（5.5%）采用跨理论模型作为评估结果的框架。总体而言，结果表明，尽管社交媒体在促进行为改变方面具有潜力，但长期估计行为改变超出了社交媒体健康活动的范围。这也反映在现有研究中用于评估这种可持续变化的方法中。所采用的措施通常针对即时行为或社交媒体参与，而不是针对行为层面的变化。
评估社交媒体活动促进健康行为朝着可持续结果的表现是一个复杂的过程。新兴研究侧重于评估社交媒体作为提高认识机会的潜力。此类措施在量化和隔离效果方面需要较少的努力。需要根据行为改变的阶段调整活动的设计。本研究就如何实现这一点提出了建议。
