I am conducting a study on physical activity in older adults. Now I want to decide on how long I need to give the intervention stimuli until the participants are stable in doing physical activity. Can someone recommend a study I should read to make an informed decision?
Hi Rob,
thanks for your message. Yeah, I kind of found and answer, but nothing is really certain. Always need to consider the context (developing country in Asia) and this is indeed a big challenge. Well, the intervention is still "under construction". I just had a pilot and realized that there are a number of things that do not work (here). Well, it obviously depends much on the intervention (esp. in intensity and the status of the participants). The intervention will probably be more intense (some form of written material and reminders) as intended. If you need some more details just let me know.
Andre
Hi Andre
I recently completed my doctorate and within this I explored, in the research element, the intervention of Motivational Interviewing with forensic psychiatric inpatients. This involved some written material but mostly 3 face to face discussions with each of the cases staged over several weeks. I allowed a 3 month follow-up period to review the outcome but the timeframe was difficult and rather arbitrary because of the particular environment. I encountered all sorts of issues that impacted on the rigour of the study but eventually used a before and after comparison of 3 months in review of PA attendance. My outcomes related not just to the frequency of attendance but also how the cases felt about the style of intervention. Despite limitations, both were promising. Don't know if that's of any use at all...:O)
That sounds interesting. I was also thinking of motivational interviewing, but the language is a barrier here. Well, many people do speak English, but my supervisor recommended not to go for it. However, the plan is to have one intense session (info and intervention stimuli with written material) and then an in-between "push" so that I do not loose the people half way. I think it is also related then to sample size. I believe my initial number is too high. How many people did you include and how did you actually measure PA?
That sounds like a good plan, Andre. I like the idea of the booster push - an intermediate contact of some kind seems to be important from what I've seen in the literature. The higher intensity MI sessions (more frequent sessions) seem to do better. I could only use a handful of case studies since I could not get a big enough sample for between-group comparisons. It's the nature of this environment, I'm afraid. But I did get 9 and the potential moving forward is to be able to recruit other psychiatric units in future research. As for measurement, I recorded attendance to sessions regardless of what the content was since it's as much to be able to get some of the clients doing anything at all. Even in cases where attendance wasn't made, the client seemed to be doing a lot of 'change talk', which in MI is a good sign. You're right about sample size though - it needs to be big enough to cope with losses along the way. Did you see Hillsdon and colleagues' study a few years back? They recruited 1600 people for a RCT and recorded self-reports of PA at baseline and 12 months. Interesting outcomes.
How are you planning to measure PA?
It is indeed hard to get people on board. Higher intensity means less participants because you simply cant manage. Well, yes I just had a look at the study. Drop-outs are amazingly high and the results kind of interesting. PA measurement is the next issue. I just piloted using the IPAQ and it was kind of a disaster. This tool is not sensitive enough and people have problems to understand the questions. Now I am looking at accelerometers, but I dont think I can get many. A pedometer might work. I could use another questionnaire as well to have 2 measures of PA. I am looking at the ones that are out there (for the age group). Just 7 are published and of those I cant see a good fit yet. It probably all boils down to reduction of sample......
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