Shih Cynthia, Pudipeddi Ruhi, Uthayakumar Arany, Washington Peter
Quokka, Palo Alto, CA, United States.
Department of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States.
JMIRx Med. 2021 Oct 27;2(4):e24972. doi: 10.2196/24972.
Developing healthy habits and maintaining prolonged behavior changes are often difficult tasks. Mental health is one of the largest health concerns globally, including for college students.
Our aim was to conduct an exploratory feasibility study of local community-based interventions by developing Quokka, a web platform promoting well-being activity on university campuses. We evaluated the intervention's potential for promotion of local, social, and unfamiliar activities pertaining to healthy habits.
To evaluate this framework's potential for increased participation in healthy habits, we conducted a 6-to-8-week feasibility study via a "challenge" across 4 university campuses with a total of 277 participants. We chose a different well-being theme each week, and we conducted weekly surveys to (1) gauge factors that motivated users to complete or not complete the weekly challenge, (2) identify participation trends, and (3) evaluate the feasibility of the intervention to promote local, social, and novel well-being activities. We tested the hypotheses that Quokka participants would self-report participation in more local activities than remote activities for all challenges (Hypothesis H1), more social activities than individual activities (Hypothesis H2), and new rather than familiar activities (Hypothesis H3).
After Bonferroni correction using a Clopper-Pearson binomial proportion confidence interval for one test, we found that there was a strong preference for local activities for all challenge themes. Similarly, users significantly preferred group activities over individual activities (P<.001 for most challenge themes). For most challenge themes, there were not enough data to significantly distinguish a preference toward familiar or new activities (P<.001 for a subset of challenge themes in some schools).
We find that local community-based well-being interventions such as Quokka can facilitate positive behaviors. We discuss these findings and their implications for the research and design of location-based digital communities for well-being promotion.
养成健康习惯并维持长期的行为改变往往是艰巨的任务。心理健康是全球最大的健康问题之一，大学生群体也不例外。
我们的目标是通过开发Quokka（一个促进大学校园健康活动的网络平台）来开展一项基于当地社区干预措施的探索性可行性研究。我们评估了该干预措施在促进与健康习惯相关的本地、社交和陌生活动方面的潜力。
为了评估这个框架在增加健康习惯参与度方面的潜力，我们通过在4个大学校园开展一项为期6至8周的“挑战”可行性研究，共有277名参与者。我们每周选择一个不同的健康主题，并进行每周一次的调查，以（1）衡量促使用户完成或未完成每周挑战的因素，（2）确定参与趋势，以及（3）评估该干预措施在促进本地、社交和新颖健康活动方面的可行性。我们检验了以下假设：对于所有挑战，Quokka参与者自我报告参与本地活动的次数会多于远程活动（假设H1），参与社交活动的次数会多于个人活动（假设H2），以及参与新活动而非熟悉活动（假设H3）。
在使用Clopper-Pearson二项式比例置信区间对一次检验进行Bonferroni校正后，我们发现所有挑战主题下，参与者都强烈偏好本地活动。同样，用户明显更倾向于团体活动而非个人活动（大多数挑战主题下P<.001）。对于大多数挑战主题，没有足够的数据来显著区分对熟悉或新活动的偏好（部分学校的一些挑战主题子集P<.001）。
我们发现像Quokka这样基于当地社区的健康干预措施可以促进积极行为。我们讨论了这些发现及其对基于位置的数字社区促进健康的研究和设计的启示。
