Efficacy of an Internet Walking Program for Older Adults

137 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003.The Internet holds tremendous potential as a communication channel for large-scale physical activity interventions. Findings from recently published studies support the use of the Internet for delivering physical activity interventions, but to date the effectiveness of an Internet-based intervention has not been compared to more conventional interventions. This study compared the effectiveness of an 8-week home-based walking program delivered online with weekly email prompts and the same 8-week home-based walking program delivered via the postal service (standard care) with weekly telephone reminders. The main objective of this study was to examine increases in the number of minutes spent walking for exercise among a sample of 94 (n = 21 male, n = 73 female) healthy, low active, computer users (Mean age = 54.4) randomized to either the Internet or the standard care condition. A repeated measures multivariate analyses of variance indicated that the Internet condition was as effective as the standard care condition in increasing both the number of days and the number of minutes spent walking for exercise per week. Across groups there was a significant increase from baseline to week 8 in the number of days (2.38 versus 3.78, p < .01) and minutes (56.01 versus 131.72, p < .01) spent walking for exercise. These results suggest that a targeted online approach was just as effective as traditional print materials in increasing physical activity in low active adults.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD