An Animation- Versus Text-Based Computer-Tailored Game Intervention to Prevent Alcohol Consumption and Binge Drinking in Adolescents: Study Protocol

The purpose of this paper is to describe the protocol for the design, implementation, and evaluation of an animation- versus text-based computer tailoring game intervention aimed at preventing alcohol consumption and binge drinking (BD) in adolescents. A cluster-randomized controlled trial (CRCT) is carried out in students aged 14–19 enrolled in 24 high schools from Andalusia (Spain), which are randomized either to experimental (EC-1, EC-2) or waiting-list control conditions (CC). EC-1 receives an online intervention (Alerta Alcohol) with personalized health advice, using textual feedback and several gamification techniques. EC-2 receives an improved version (Alerta Alcohol 2.0) using animated videos and new gamification strategies. Both programs consist of nine sessions (seven taking place at high school and two at home): session 1 or baseline, sessions 2 and 3 that provide tailored advice based on the I-Change Model; sessions 4, 5, 7, and 8 are booster sessions, and sessions 6 and 9 are follow-up questionnaires at six and twelve months. The CC completes the baseline and the evaluation questionnaires. The primary outcome is BD within 30 days before post-test evaluations, and as secondary outcomes we assess other patterns of alcohol use. The findings should help the development of future alcohol drinking prevention interventions in adolescents.

Measuring psychological constructs in computer-tailored interventions: novel possibilities to reduce participant burden and increase engagement

Within the field of health psychology, there has been an enormous increase in behaviour change interventions that use digital technology. Answering questions and providing tailored feedback based on the answers provided by participants is the key working mechanism when using computer-tailoring in behaviour change interventions. This behaviour change method has proven to be (cost-)effective and results in participants being exposed to material that is tailored to their social-cognitive profile. At the same time, answering questions to assess this profile increases participant burden and might contribute to low levels of engagement - key challenges in digital health. This article provides insight into whether and how routinely collected data and novel self-assessment methods can be used in computer-tailoring to measure psychological constructs and address these key challenges. The examples presented suggest that the development of novel proxy measures for measuring psychological constructs relevant to computer-tailoring is indeed possible. However, the extent to which measures are valid and actually do reduce participant burden, increase engagement and have other potential benefits is speculative and needs further investigation. The recommendations provided for future research and practice are hoped to serve as a stimulance for driving further momentum in this area.

Please, do take it personally: an Exploration of Tailoring Health Messages

Electronic- and mobile-health applications (Apps) are considered as potentially powerful means to improve the nutrition behaviour of users. In the design of App messages, “tailoring” can be used as it is found to be effective in affecting health behaviour outcomes including nutrition. Tailoring entails matching message content to characteristics of a message receiver. However, research provides some indications that message characteristics other than content could be related to the effectiveness of tailored communication (e.g. frequency). Furthermore, there are different approaches on how to execute tailoring. Two of such approaches are personalization and customization. With personalization, the preferences of a new App user are selected by a computer-tailoring-system based on the preferences of App users with similar characteristics. With customization, a new App user actively sets the preferences himself.The aim of this research was to take a first step in investigating whether personalization and customization are suitable to tailor preferences for non-content message characteristics in the context of nutrition. Based on literature study and interviews with a number of dietitians (n = 3) a selection of personal characteristics and non-content message characteristics was made, and applied in the setup of a survey targeting respondents (n = 37) with an interest in changing their dietary habits. The (Dutch) online survey was designed with the idea of asking respondents to enact setting up a new account with a mobile health App. So, respondents were asked to imagine that they were going to create an App account (NB they were told that it was a fictional account), and were asked to fill in some items regarding several personal characteristics. Next, respondents were asked to choose between setting preferences for the non-content message characteristics themselves (= customization) and setting preferences for non-content message characteristics of persons similar to themselves (e.g. gender and age) by the App (= personalization). Of the 37 survey respondents, most respondents (73%, n = 27) preferred customization in order to set their preferences in contrast to approximately a quarter of the respondents (27%, n = 10) that preferred personalization.In conclusion, this research found that at this moment the preferences of message receivers could be best tailored via customization due to a) great diversity in personal characteristics and preferences and b) a majority of the respondents that preferred customization over personalization. Nonetheless, it seems additionally worthwhile to further explore relations between personal characteristics and preferences to enable personalization as approximately a quarter of the respondents preferred this approach.

Comprehensive overview of computer-based health information tailoring: a systematic scoping review

ObjectivesTo explore the scope of the published literature on computer-tailoring, considering both the development and the evaluation aspects, with the aim of identifying and categorising main approaches and detecting research gaps, tendencies and trends.SettingOriginal researches from any country and healthcare setting.ParticipantsPatients or health consumers with any health condition regardless of their specific characteristics.MethodA systematic scoping review was undertaken based on the York’s five-stage framework outlined by Arksey and O’Malley. Five leading databases were searched: PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, EBSCO and IEEE for articles published between 1990 and 2017. Tailoring concept was investigated for three aspects: system design, information delivery and evaluation. Both quantitative (ie, frequencies) and qualitative (ie, theme analysis) methods have been used to synthesis the data.ResultsAfter reviewing 1320 studies, 360 articles were identified for inclusion. Two main routes were identified in tailoring literature including public health research (64%) and computer science research (17%). The most common facets used for tailoring were sociodemographic (73 %), target behaviour status (59%) and psycho-behavioural determinants (56%), respectively. The analysis showed that only 13% of the studies described the tailoring algorithm they used, from which two approaches revealed: information retrieval (12%) and natural language generation (1%). The systematic mapping of the delivery channel indicated that nearly half of the articles used the web (57%) to deliver the tailored information; printout (19%) and email (10%) came next. Analysis of the evaluation approaches showed that nearly half of the articles (53%) used an outcome-based approach, 44% used process evaluation and 3% assessed cost-effectiveness.ConclusionsThis scoping review can inform researchers to identify the methodological approaches of computer tailoring. Improvements in reporting and conduct are imperative. Further research on tailoring methodology is warranted, and in particular, there is a need for a guideline to standardise reporting.

Comprehensive overview of computer-based health information tailoring: a scoping review protocol

IntroductionTailoring health information to the needs of individuals has become an important part of modern health communications. Tailoring has been addressed by researchers from different disciplines leading to the emergence of a wide range of approaches, making the newcomers confused. In order to address this, a comprehensive overview of the field with the indications of research gaps, tendencies and trends will be helpful. As a result, a systematic protocol was outlined to conduct a scoping review within the field of computer-based health information tailoring.Methods and analysisThis protocol is based on the York’s five-stage framework outlined by Arksey and O’Malley. A field-specific structure was defined as a basis for undertaking each stage. The structure comprised three main aspects:system design,information communicationandevaluation. Five leading databases were searched: PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, EBSCO and IEEE and a broad search strategy was used with less strict inclusion criteria to cover the breadth of evidence. Theoretical frameworks were used to develop the data extraction form and a rigorous approach was introduced to identify the categories from data. Several explanatory-descriptive methods were considered to analyse the data, from which some were proposed to be employed for the first time in scoping studies.Ethics and disseminationThis study investigates the breadth and depth of existing literature on computer-tailoring and as a secondary analysis, does not require ethics approval. We anticipate that the results will identify research gaps and novel ideas for future studies and provide direction to combine methods from different disciplines. The research findings will be submitted for publication to relevant peer-reviewed journals and conferences targeting health promotion and patient education.

Aspects of User Profiling in Computer-based Health Information Tailoring Systems: A Narrative Review

Introduction: The recent shift from the conventional physician-centered approach to the more polpular approach that with the focuse on patient as the center of healthcare, emphaizes on the critical role of informing and educating patients. Studies shown that tailoring health information to the needs of individuals is more effective than generic materials. Recent improvements in the fields of computer science and Information Communication Technology have made it possible to computerize such an adaptation process. Information tailoring systems use an internal representation of user conditions and needs, which is referred to as a “user model” or “user profile.” A user profile represents the system’s beliefs about the user. Hence, it may simply contain demographic information or sophisticated factors such as the state of the disease, user’s attitude, interest, preference, and knowledge. The user profile is known as the basis for designing other system components and has a great impact on the acceptance of the system by the user and the quality of the tailored information. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have been conducted so far to analyze and classify user profile aspects and characteristics. In this systematic narrative review, we aim to provide aspects of profiling in health information tailoring systems based on literature from different disciplines. Methods: comprehensive searches of the PubMed and Scopus databases have been conducted. We searched among English papers with publishing dates ranging from 1990 onward; since that is when computer-tailoring first appeared within the literature. we have devised a list of terms pertinent to the main concepts of computer-tailoring and used a qualitative–interpretive approach for data extraction. Results: Analyzing the data from 32 eligible studies, we found three aspects in designing a tailoring user profile. Each aspect with its characteristics are provided below: 1-Identifying common factors used in profiles and classifying these factors thematically, which has three attributes: The number of factors used to design the user profile and their diversity (e.g. demographic,clinical,behavioral information, learning style and so forth) The approaches used to Identify effective factors in tailoring (e.g. evidence-based, avalible data sources) Attributes of the factors (e.g. long-term/short-term, static/dynamic) 2-Data collection tools and methods, which has two attributes: Data collection methods (e.g. explicit, implicit, mixed) Assessment tool (e.g. questionnaire, patient record) 3-Data interpretation that demonstrates to what extent the collected data needs to be analyzed to use in tailoring. we have also identified two main approaches regarding tailoring: public health and computational tailoring. Public Health communication researcher has relied greatly on health behavior models but generally has used simpler technological approaches, whereas computer science employed more advanced technological approaches but integrated behavior theory to a lesser extent. These two approaches complete each other to provide the necessary requirements for designing a practical tailoring system in future studies. Conclusion: In this study we investigate different aspects of designing a user profile in health information tailoring systems. The proposed model is a valuable guide for new researchers in the field. Results from this review provide a comprehensive overview of the field and will help researchers to combine effective methods from across the disciplines in future research.