Mitigating Feelings of Loneliness and Depression by Means of Web-Based or Print-Based Physical Activity Interventions: Pooled Analysis of 2 Community-Based Intervention Trials
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Physical activity (PA) is associated with benefits, such as fewer depressive symptoms and loneliness. Web- and print-based PA interventions can help older individuals accordingly. Objective We aimed to test the following research questions: Do PA interventions delivered in a web- or print-based mode improve self-reported PA stage of change, social-cognitive determinants of PA, loneliness, and symptoms of depression? Is subjective age a mediator and stage of change a moderator of this effect? Methods Overall, 831 adults aged ≥60 years were recruited and either allocated to a print-based or web-based intervention group or assigned to a wait-list control group (WLCG) in 2 community-based PA intervention trials over 10 weeks. Missing value imputation using an expectation-maximization algorithm was applied. Frequency analyses, multivariate analyses of variance, and moderated mediation analyses were conducted. Results The web-based intervention outperformed (47/59, 80% of initially inactive individuals being adopters, and 396/411, 96.4% of initially active individuals being maintainers of the recommended PA behavior) the print-based intervention (20/25, 80% of adopters, and 63/69, 91% of maintainers) and the WLCG (5/7, 71% of adopters; 141/150, 94% of maintainers). The pattern regarding adopters was statistically significant (web vs print Z=–1.94; P=.02; WLCG vs web Z=3.8367; P=.01). The pattern was replicated with stages (χ24=79.1; P<.001; contingency coefficient 0.314; P<.001); in the WLCG, 40.1% (63/157) of the study participants moved to or remained in action stage. This number was higher in the groups receiving web-based (357/470, 76%) or print-based interventions (64/94, 68.1%). A significant difference was observed favoring the 2 intervention groups over and above the WLCG (F19, 701=4.778; P<.001; η2=0.098) and a significant interaction of time and group (F19, 701=2.778; P<.001; η2=0.070) for predictors of behavior. The effects of the interventions on subjective age, loneliness, and depression revealed that both between-group effects (F3, 717=8.668; P<.001; η2=0.018) and the interaction between group and time were significant (F3, 717=6.101; P<.001; η2=0.025). In a moderated mediation model, both interventions had a significant direct effect on depression in comparison with the WLCG (web-based: c′ path −0.86, 95% CI −1.58 to −0.13, SE 0.38; print-based: c′ path −1.96, 95% CI −2.99 to −0.92, SE 0.53). Furthermore, subjective age was positively related to depression (b path 0.14, 95% CI 0.05-0.23; SE 0.05). An indirect effect of the intervention on depression via subjective age was only present for participants who were in actor stage and received the web-based intervention (ab path −0.14, 95% CI −0.34 to −0.01; SE 0.09). Conclusions Web-based interventions appear to be as effective as print-based interventions. Both modes might help older individuals remain or become active and experience fewer depression symptoms, especially if they feel younger. Trial Registration German Registry of Clinical Trials DRKS00010052 (PROMOTE 1); https://tinyurl.com/nnzarpsu and DRKS00016073 (PROMOTE 2); https://tinyurl.com/4fhcvkwy International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) RR2-10.2196/15168
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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 | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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".