City Research Online

Abstract

Background:
Adherence to weight management strategies may be undermined where lengthy strategy explanations limit engagement and understanding, weakening intervention efficacy. By contrast, implementation intentions have been shown to promote adherence across various health behaviors.

Objective:
This study aimed to investigate the impact of explanation length and implementation intentions on adherence to brief weight management strategies.

Methods:
Participants (N=200) with a BMI above 25 and an interest in losing weight were recruited from a commercial digital weight management service provider. Participants received information about 1 of 4 weight management strategies on a smartphone app in either a brief or detailed format and were asked to plan their use of the strategy with implementation intentions or were given tips on strategy use. Participants received daily prompts over a 2-week period to report whether they used their assigned strategy. Proposed moderators (need for cognition and planning skills) were measured at baseline.

Results:
Strategy adherence was greater with brief information (mean 74%, SD 23%) compared with detailed information (mean 69%, SD 23%); however, this small effect size (Cohen d=0.24) was not statistically significant (P=.13). There was no moderation by need for cognition (P=.25). Adherence did not differ significantly between implementation intentions (mean 71%, SD 27%) and tips (mean 72%, SD 21%; P=.73); however, there was moderation by planning skills (P=.04). As predicted, adherence was greater with implementation intentions compared with tips among those with poorer planning skills.

Conclusions:
Shorter explanation length and implementation intentions (in poorer planners) may enhance adherence to brief weight management strategies, and further investigation is required to confirm these effects.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© Khaleda Ahmadyar, Joanna Szypula, Angeliki Bogosian, Katy Tapper. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://mhealth.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
Publisher Keywords:	Humans, Patient Compliance, Intention, Time Factors, Adult, Middle Aged, Female, Male, Weight Reduction Programs, Surveys and Questionnaires, Treatment Adherence and Compliance, adherence, behaviour change, brief weight management, efficacy, engagement, experimental study, implementation intention, intervention, linear regression, mobile phone, strategy, understanding, weight, weight loss, weight management, weight management strategy, Humans, Female, Male, Intention, Adult, Middle Aged, Weight Reduction Programs, Surveys and Questionnaires, Patient Compliance, Time Factors, Treatment Adherence and Compliance
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Global, Public & Population Health & Policy School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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