Expressive Interviewing Agents to Support Health-Related Behavior Change

NCT ID: NCT05949840

Last Updated: 2023-07-18

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 151 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2021-05-24
• Study Completion Date: 2021-06-07

Brief Summary

Expressive writing and motivational interviewing are well-known approaches to help patients handle stressful life events. While these methods are often applied by human counselors, it is less well understood if an automated approach can encourage behavior changes in patients. This study presents an automated writing system and evaluates its impact on individual behavior related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigators developed a rule-based dialogue system for "Expressive Interviewing" to elicit writing from participants on the subject of how COVID-19 has impacted their lives. In May-June 2021, the investigators randomly assigned online participants (N=151) to the Expressive Interviewing task and a control condition. The investigators examined their behavior with a survey before the intervention, immediately after, and two weeks after. In aggregate, task participants experienced a significant decrease in stress in the short-term (~23% decrease, p < 0.001) and no significant changes in longer-term outcomes compared to the control group. Within the task, participants showed different outcomes based on their writing. Participants who wrote with more anxiety-related words showed a greater short-term decrease in stress (R=-0.264, p<0.001), and those who wrote with more positive emotion words reported a more meaningful experience (R=0.243, p=0.001). For longer-term effects, participants who wrote with more lexical diversity underwent an increase in social activity (R=0.266, p<0.001). Expressive Interviewing can generally help with mental health in the short term but not longer-term, and participants' writing choices may make a difference in outcomes. While there were no significant long-term effects observed, the positive short term effect points to potential future directions with a series of Expressive Interviewing interventions for longer-term effects.

Conditions

Mental Stress

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: SUPPORTIVE_CARE
• Blinding Strategy: DOUBLE

Study Groups

Expressive Interviewing + Survey

Intervention with Expressive Interviewing computer system. Participants spent roughly 10-15 minutes each in conversation with an automated computer chat system. Participants answered a survey about mental health and social outcomes immediately before the intervention and two weeks after the intervention.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Expressive Interviewing

Intervention Type: OTHER

Automated computer system designed to engage participants in discussion about challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Survey Only

No intervention. Participants answered a survey about mental health and social outcomes at time of recruitment and two weeks afterward.

Group Type: NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Interventions

Expressive Interviewing

Automated computer system designed to engage participants in discussion about challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Intervention Type: OTHER

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Using Prolific platform as crowd worker
• Living in United States

Exclusion Criteria

• Participating in another condition of the same study

• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

University of Texas at Austin

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of Michigan

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Rada Mihalcea

Professor of Computer Science

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Locations

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

Countries

United States

References

Stewart I, Welch C, An L, Resnicow K, Pennebaker J, Mihalcea R. Expressive Interviewing Agents to Support Health-Related Behavior Change: Randomized Controlled Study of COVID-19 Behaviors. JMIR Form Res. 2023 Aug 1;7:e40277. doi: 10.2196/40277.

Reference Type: RESULT

PMID: 37074948 (View on PubMed)

Other Identifiers

HUM00182586

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id