Understanding Self-Guided Web-Based Educational Interventions for Patients With Chronic Health Conditions: Systematic Review of Intervention Features and Adherence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Chronic diseases contribute to 71% of deaths worldwide every year, and an estimated 15 million people between the ages of 30 and 69 years die mainly because of cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, or diabetes. Web-based educational interventions may facilitate disease management. These are also considered to be a flexible and low-cost method to deliver tailored information to patients. Previous studies concluded that the implementation of different features and the degree of adherence to the intervention are key factors in determining the success of the intervention. However, limited research has been conducted to understand the acceptability of specific features and user adherence to self-guided web interventions. OBJECTIVE: This systematic review aims to understand how web-based intervention features are evaluated, to investigate their acceptability, and to describe how adherence to web-based self-guided interventions is defined and measured. METHODS: Studies published on self-guided web-based educational interventions for people (≥14 years old) with chronic health conditions published between January 2005 and June 2020 were reviewed following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) Statement protocol. The search was performed using the PubMed, Cochrane Library, and EMBASE (Excerpta Medica dataBASE) databases; the reference lists of the selected articles were also reviewed. The comparison of the interventions and analysis of the features were based on the published content from the selected articles. RESULTS: A total of 20 studies were included. Seven principal features were identified, with goal setting, self-monitoring, and feedback being the most frequently used. The acceptability of the features was measured based on the comments collected from users, their association with clinical outcomes, or device adherence. The use of quizzes was positively reported by participants. Self-monitoring, goal setting, feedback, and discussion forums yielded mixed results. The negative acceptability was related to the choice of the discussion topic, lack of face-to-face contact, and technical issues. This review shows that the evaluation of adherence to educational interventions was inconsistent among the studies, limiting comparisons. A clear definition of adherence to an intervention is lacking. CONCLUSIONS: Although limited information was available, it appears that features related to interaction and personalization are important for improving clinical outcomes and users' experience. When designing web-based interventions, the selection of features should be based on the targeted population's needs, the balance between positive and negative impacts of having human involvement in the intervention, and the reduction of technical barriers. There is a lack of consensus on the method of evaluating adherence to an intervention. Both investigations of the acceptability features and adherence should be considered when designing and evaluating web-based interventions. A proof-of-concept or pilot study would be useful for establishing the required level of engagement needed to define adherence.
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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 | 0.013 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| 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".