Effectiveness of a Self-guided Mobile Application in Improving Wellbeing and Stress Coping

Summary

Excessive and chronic stress is a major public global health concern. Young adults are at particular risk to experience heightened stress because of life transitions. Short skills-focused self-guided applications (SGA) on mobile phones are a cost-effective and scalable way to equip users with better stress-coping skills, but many SGA stress-coping programmes are not evidence-based, existing research is flawed with methodological problems and is also predominantly conducted in Western countries. Questions also remain for whom SGAs work (moderators) and by which pathways (mediators).

This study is a randomised-controlled trial (RCT) that evaluates the effectiveness of a recently developed mobile-phone SGA in improving stress coping in young adults.

Hypothesis 1: The intervention group will report significantly lower stress symptoms at post-intervention and 1-month follow-up compared to the control group.

Hypothesis 2: Coping self-efficacy will mediate the expected relationship between the use of the Stress-SGA and lower stress symptoms, i.e. people with higher coping self-efficacy will benefit more from the Stress-SGA than those with lower coping self-efficacy.

Hypothesis 3: Psychological mindedness will moderate the expected relationship between the use of Stress-SGA and lower stress symptoms, i.e. people high in psychological mindedness will benefit more from the Stress-SGA than those with lower psychological mindedness.

Conditions

• Stress

Interventions

DEVICE

Self-guided program on stress coping

This is an 8-day program that provides psychoeducation on the negative effects of stress and effective stress-management skills to combat stress. Guided by principles of CBT, the program targets the thoughts and behaviours of participants and equips them with skills to alter negative cognitions pertaining to stress. Participants are engaging with a series of exercises involving reflection and mindfulness where they are required to spot and write down their stressors, the negative thoughts associated with the stressors, as well as positive affirmations. Participants will also be taught breathing exercises and are encouraged to practice them during 2 check-ins.

DEVICE

Self-guided program on cooperation

The 8-day program on cooperation aims to provide psychoeducation for participants to understand and improve collaboration and interpersonal relationships. Short quizzes and practice exercises on feedback-giving will be included. The time and duration of the cooperation SGA is matched to the stress-coping SGA to ensure that participants spend a similar amount of time and effort across both the intervention and active-control conditions.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Intellect Pte. Ltd.

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• National University of Singapore

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Oliver Suendermann, Ph.D. · National University of Singapore

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

30 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-09-01

Primary Completion

2022-02-01

Completion

2022-02-01

Countries

• Singapore

Study Locations