Maintenance of behaviour change following a community-wide gamification based physical activity intervention

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Author
Harris, Marc Ashley
Date
2018-11-13Acceptance date
2018-11-10
Type
Article
Publisher
Elsevier
ISSN
2211-3355
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Gamification refers to the use of game mechanics (e.g. competition, point scoring, progress visualisation and task setting) to engage and motivate people to achieve an end goal. Public health programs that incorporate gamification-based approaches which aim to improve the public's health have grown in popularity, however most commonplace are individualistic, smartphone-based applications and few studies have been conducted on community-wide interventions. Furthermore, the few studies which have been conducted have relied on small sample sizes with short-term follow-up. In view of this gap in current understanding, this study explored the impact of a community-wide gamified intervention, called ‘Beat the Street’ (in Reading UK) on levels of physical activity at 1 and 2-years post-intervention (between 2014 and 2016). Data were available for N = 1567 participants at one-year post-intervention and N = 723 participants at 2-years post-intervention. A Pretest-Posttest analysis revealed a 11% and 13% decrease in levels of inactivity at 1 and 2-years post-intervention respectively. Furthermore, participants who were inactive at baseline reported undertaking 3.4 and 3.8 days of activity at 1 and 2-years post-intervention, respectively. These findings provide promising preliminary evidence that gamification may be effective for decreasing physical inactivity and game-design mechanisms which may support behaviour change are discussed.
Journal/conference proceeding
Preventive Medicine Reports;
Citation
Harris, M.A. (2018) 'Maintenance of behaviour change following a community-wide gamification based physical activity intervention', Preventive Medicine Reports. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2018.11.009
Description
Article published in Preventive Medicine Reports available open access at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2018.11.009
Sponsorship
Cardiff Metropolitan University (Grant ID: Cardiff Metropolian (Internal))
Collections
- Sport Research Groups [789]
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