In-person and Online Healthy Eating Promotion Through Self-regulation (HEP-S)

Summary

Obesity has more than doubled worldwide since 1980. The challenge with obesity, as with many other modern diseases, is that the solution may not rely on the medical side of the chain but rather on the individual via modifiable factors and behavioral changes such as eating habits and physical activity.

The main goals of Healthy Eating Promotion with Self-regulation (HEP-S) are to design, implement, and evaluate the efficacy of an online intervention that promotes healthy eating among elementary school children using narratives involving self-regulation themes and skills. Self-regulation (SR) refers to the processes that allow individuals to proactively control the personal, behavioral, and environmental influences that impact their behavior, including eating. The focus of this project is not on delivering knowledge per se about healthy eating but rather on promoting and developing a set of transversal skills and strategies on the healthy habits' domain. We chose this focus because we recognized that beliefs about healthy eating have a stronger influence on eating behavior than factual knowledge about food. At the core of this intervention are the narratives, an important educational tool that favors child development; they allow readers to reflect on themselves and their behavior through the characters presented. Narratives also instigate the debate and the uncovering of different perspectives on how to cope with daily dilemmas. By using stories to initiate discussion and reflection, it is expected that a change of beliefs will occur, thus prompting a behavioral change.

In today's world, there is an increasing need to dematerialise procedures so interventions can reach more people at a lower cost. Thus, it is important to test the feasibility of the online version of the intervention.

Overall, it is expected that children taking part of the intervention will, at the end of the intervention, increase their use of SR strategies for healthy eating, enhance their sense of self-efficacy for healthy eating, and increase their consumption of healthy foods. Additionally, it is expected that their knowledge on the topic will increase, that their food preferences become healthier, and that they will display more positive perceptions and attitudes about the topic. Lastly, it is expected that participants enrolled in the enhanced-online-intervention group will be more engaged in the intervention than the online-intervention group.

Conditions

• Healthy Eating

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Online Program: Healthy Eating Promotion with Self-regulation

Online-Intervention group

BEHAVIORAL

Enhanced Online Program: Healthy Eating Promotion with Self-regulation

Enhanced-online-Intervention Group

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Minho

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Paula Magalhaes, PhD · Psychology Research Cente r (CIPsi) of University of Minho

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

10 Years

Max Age

12 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-01-27

Primary Completion

2022-07-31

Completion

2022-07-31

Countries

• Portugal

Study Locations