A systematic review with meta‐analyses of text message‐delivered behaviour change interventions for weight loss and weight loss maintenance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Short Message Service (SMS)-delivered behaviour change interventions are frequently used to support weight management. This systematic review examines the effectiveness of SMS-delivered behaviour change interventions for weight management. Electronic databases were searched for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing SMS-delivered adult weight management interventions to control groups, published between 1990 and 2018. Weight change was examined using random effects meta-analyses at intervention cessation and postintervention follow-up. Subgroup analyses examined intervention duration, SMS frequency, theory use, SMS interactivity, and SMS tailoring. Fifteen studies met inclusion criteria (2705 participants). For weight loss interventions (n = 12, 1977 participants), the mean difference in weight change was -2.28 kg (95% confidence interval [CI] -3.17 to -1.36 kg). No studies reported postintervention follow-up. For weight loss maintenance interventions (n = 3, 728 participants), the mean difference in weight change was -0.68 kg (95% CI, -1.31 to -0.05 kg), and postintervention follow-up (n = 2, 498 participants) effects were -0.57 kg (95% CI, -1.67 to 0.53 kg). No subgroup differences were found. SMS-delivered behaviour change interventions for weight loss led to significant small to moderate weight loss and weight loss maintenance compared with control groups. Evidence on long-term effects is limited. SMS-delivered behaviour change interventions are a potentially effective and scalable intervention option for obesity treatment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.016 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".