Refining what works in tailoring: Comprehensive meta-analysis of computer-tailored interventions
Abstract
Finding optimally effective strategies for health behavior interventions is a major goal of public health research. As intervention designs and mechanisms have been evaluated, it seems that tailoring behavior change feedback is a key element of successful interventions. Tailored interventions provide a means of reducing participant burden and disseminating information in ways that are easily accessible, interesting, and personally relevant. To this end, use of computer-tailored interventions has become a primary approach for interventions in the health behavior field.^ Up to this point, research and reviews of tailored interventions have lacked sufficient power (due to limited outcomes available on a given behavior) and limited researchers’ ability to draw meaningful conclusions about the impact of tailored interventions on public health. The current study uses meta-analytic procedures to assess the effect of computer tailored interventions targeting five behaviors of primary concern for health researchers: smoking cessation, receipt of regular mammography screening, consumption of fruits and vegetables, reduced dietary fat intake, and increased physical activity. ^ Results demonstrated significant effect sizes across behaviors. Tailored interventions were more effective than nontailored interventions in an overall analysis as well as across individual behaviors. Dynamic tailoring appeared to generate larger effect sizes with interventions targeting decreasing behaviors (smoking, dietary fat), while static tailoring demonstrated larger effects with interventions targeting increasing behaviors (fruit and vegetable consumption, mammography, physical activity).^ Additional analyses of moderator variables revealed significantly better outcomes for those studies using the Transtheoretical Model, and that tailored on stages of change, processes of change, and decisional balance, as well as significantly larger effects among those studies using proactive rather than reactive recruitment strategies. This analysis further elucidates the components of successful, tailored interventions and builds on the existing literature on health behavior change. Also discussed are key challenges to the meta-analytic study of behavior change and implications for the state of future research.^
Subject Area
Psychology, Behavioral|Psychology, Clinical
Recommended Citation
Lindsey R Anderson,
"Refining what works in tailoring: Comprehensive meta-analysis of computer-tailored interventions"
(2011).
Dissertations and Master's Theses (Campus Access).
Paper AAI3465908.
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dissertations/AAI3465908