The Impact of a Health Video Game on User-Game Engagement and Dietary Choices
NCT ID: NCT04156919
Last Updated: 2023-12-14
Study Results
The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.
Basic Information
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COMPLETED
NA
89 participants
INTERVENTIONAL
2019-11-12
2019-12-31
Brief Summary
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Detailed Description
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Study Design, Participants and Recruitment
A cluster randomized controlled trial with three data collection periods-baseline, post one, and post two- will be adopted for this study. We will collaborate with a primary school in the North-East District of Botswana. Recruitment will be done with the help of the school with which we are collaborating. The children will be sent home with consent forms to obtain parental consent. Before participation, eligible parents will provide informed consent and child assent. To ensure sufficient power of 0.8 with a medium effect size, 120 participants will be recruited to participate in the experiment.
Procedures
Following baseline assessment, the children will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: playfulness condition, non-playfulness condition, and control condition. The playfulness and non-playfulness conditions will vary in terms of the climate such that children in the playfulness condition will have a relaxed, play-oriented context while those in the non-playfulness condition will have a more formal work-oriented context. The children in the control condition will play a video game that is unrelated to diet and lifestyle choices. Randomization will be done at the class/cluster level to avoid contamination between the experimental conditions (Puffer et al. 2005). The baseline survey, including demographics and family environment, gaming experience/ frequency of gameplay, nutrition knowledge, social cognitive factors (i.e., attitude, intention, and health locus of control), will be administered after obtaining consent. Since the administration of a pre-test survey may change the way that participants interact with the game (during the experiment) and/or suggest to the participants that there is a socially desirable way to respond to outcome measures, the pre-test survey will be administered a week before the actual experiment. Post 1 experiment data collection will occur immediately upon completion of the experiment. The study will be conducted from November 2019 to May 2020. Post 2 experiment data collection will occur three months after the experiments.
Experimental Setup
Taking into account the malleability of the engagement construct (Boekaerts 2016), we ensured that our setup does not use invasive equipment. The chosen setup thus results from a trade-off between sensitivity and practical requirements. We will use the Tobii pro nano eye tracker that captures gaze data at 60Hz. Skin conductance will be measured using the shimmer 3 GSR kit. It was selected because of its small size and lightweight (28g).
All the experiments will be conducted individually as follows. The participants will sit in a non-swiveling chair in front of an IPAD with an eye tracker. An eye tracker will be attached to the IPAD. The experimenter will begin the session by describing the procedure to the participant. The experimenter will then place physiological feedback sensors to measure skin conductance on the participants' non-dominant hand. The non-dominant hand will be chosen to allow participants free access to the video game touch screen with the dominant hand (Jensen et al. 2016). The participant will be given 6 minutes to feel comfortable, and, at that time, any necessary technical adjustments will be made. We will exclude children who report that they are not comfortable and/or depict symptoms of discomfort. After the participant is comfortable, a survey will be administered to capture their mood. Next, the experimenter will record baseline GSR and gaze data for 2 minutes. To initiate the calibration process for eye gaze data, participants will be required to trace an on-screen object with their eyes (Jensen et al. 2016). Participants will play eight levels of the mobile health game. Based on our pre-tests, the completion of eight levels should take about 20 minutes. This duration was chosen because to prevent myopia, children are advised not to play with handheld devices for more than 30 minutes at a stretch.
After the game, a post-test questionnaire will be administered to capture 1) nutritional knowledge acquisition, 2) subjective emotional responses, 3) social cognitive factors, and 4) perceived game complexity. After completing the post hoc survey, participants will choose four actual food items under the pretext of a parting gift. The following instruction will be used: "thank you for your time. You may now pick what you like from these options. You can eat your choice now or later. It is entirely up to you." The choice will serve as an objective measure of on-site behavior. Following the experiments, we will conduct a follow-up data collection after three months.
Conditions
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Study Design
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RANDOMIZED
PARALLEL
PREVENTION
DOUBLE
Study Groups
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Playful condition
Children in the playful and non-playful conditions will receive the fooya! intervention but will be varied in the psychological state of playfulness. Children in the playful condition will play a health game called fooya! Drawing on the playfulness literature, we will manipulate four dimensions of play. First, to manipulate the voluntariness of tasks, children in the playful condition will be asked/invited to participate in the study. Second, to manipulate adult presence, there will be little to no teacher involvement in the playful condition. Third, to manipulate the timing of the activity, children in the playful condition will be given an option to play anytime, including after school hours. Fourth, to manipulate the goal perception, the children in the playful condition will be told that their activity is not graded-i.e., autotelic.
fooya!™
fooya!™ is a science/evidence-based AI-enabled neuromodulation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) technology. fooya!™ has been shown to deliver statistically significant outcomes concerning food choices during randomized-controlled clinical trials conducted at the Baylor College of Medicine's Children's Nutrition Research in the United States of America as well as India. In the game, children make several decisions with split-second timing, such as food choices, destroying bad/unhealthy food robots using the bad foods that are thrown at the player, and saving themselves. If the children collect good/healthy foods, they are in fit-zone for a while, which shields them from bad food robots.
Non-playful condition
As mentioned earlier, we will manipulate four dimensions of play. First, participation will be mandatory for children in the non-playful condition. Second, teacher presence will be more salient in this condition. Third, children in the non-playful condition will participate during school hours. Fourth, the children in the non-playful condition will be told that their activity is graded.
fooya!™
fooya!™ is a science/evidence-based AI-enabled neuromodulation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) technology. fooya!™ has been shown to deliver statistically significant outcomes concerning food choices during randomized-controlled clinical trials conducted at the Baylor College of Medicine's Children's Nutrition Research in the United States of America as well as India. In the game, children make several decisions with split-second timing, such as food choices, destroying bad/unhealthy food robots using the bad foods that are thrown at the player, and saving themselves. If the children collect good/healthy foods, they are in fit-zone for a while, which shields them from bad food robots.
Control condition
Children in the control condition will play a video game unrelated to diet and lifestyle called Wordsearch.
WordSearch
We will have an active control group that will play a WordSearch game. The intention is to have the children play a familiar video game through the same modality (IPAD) that is unrelated to diet or lifestyle choices.
Interventions
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fooya!™
fooya!™ is a science/evidence-based AI-enabled neuromodulation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) technology. fooya!™ has been shown to deliver statistically significant outcomes concerning food choices during randomized-controlled clinical trials conducted at the Baylor College of Medicine's Children's Nutrition Research in the United States of America as well as India. In the game, children make several decisions with split-second timing, such as food choices, destroying bad/unhealthy food robots using the bad foods that are thrown at the player, and saving themselves. If the children collect good/healthy foods, they are in fit-zone for a while, which shields them from bad food robots.
WordSearch
We will have an active control group that will play a WordSearch game. The intention is to have the children play a familiar video game through the same modality (IPAD) that is unrelated to diet or lifestyle choices.
Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria
* children fluent in English
* children who have a parent fluent in English who is willing to participate in the study
Exclusion Criteria
* children with implantable medical devices such as cardiac pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators
* underweight children
8 Years
11 Years
ALL
Yes
Sponsors
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Tati Siding Primary School
UNKNOWN
FriendsLearn
INDUSTRY
Oteng Ntsweng
OTHER
Responsible Party
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Oteng Ntsweng
Principal Investigator
Locations
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Tati Siding Primary School
Tati Siding, North-East District, Botswana
Countries
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Other Identifiers
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Botswana_RCT1
Identifier Type: -
Identifier Source: org_study_id