What'Sapp Based Intervention for Promoting Physical Activity Among Female College Students
Condition: Physical Activity
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The purpose of this research will be to determine the efficacy and applicability of using
      WhatsApp-based intervention for physical activity promotion in female college students.
    

Detailed description: 
      In the recent past, adoption of social media as a way of daily communication has been on the
      rise. For instance, according to Ventiola the healthcare sector has many social media tools
      including networking platforms, Wikis, blogs, media sharing sites, and virtual reality and
      gaming sites . These tools are necessary for improving the practice of healthcare workforce
      by promoting real time interaction, patient education, as well as public health education.
      However, the social media tools also present potential risk to patients including breach of
      patient information safety and also extension of professional boundaries to personal levels .
      However, as a revolutionary communication tool, social media has enhanced
      patient-practitioner relationship by ensuring that the two connect even outside the
      healthcare environment. Therefore, the application of social media in healthcare management
      and dissemination of services is not by accident, but rather, a timely invention that will
      see the improvement of health standards globally if well implemented.

      It is essential to first understand the meaning of social media before any of its application
      in promoting client-practitioner relationship is discussed. It is even more necessary when
      the issue is related to healthcare management since the dissemination of healthcare services
      is a critical affair. According to Kaplan and Michael social media is "a group of
      Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of
      Web 2.0 which allows the creation and exchange of User Generated Content." However, the new
      perspective should not make researchers drool on the fact that social media is Web 2.0 based;
      rather, the meaning of social media must be expanded to include both online and offline
      social activities. Thus, social media can be considered as a versatile communication tool
      that allows for interactive communication based on personal experiences that aim at
      influencing the actions of each other .

      Based on that context, it is imperative to note that the use of social media in healthcare
      management is not so common due to myriad factors that cannot be expressly identified.
      However, it is understandable that social media and its level of sophistication today, is
      ripe for social support in any human engagement. Thus, due to its versatility, reach and
      functionality, social media now qualifies as the most promising online support tool with
      minimum resource uptake. Most importantly, the recent studies indicate that social media has
      succeeded elsewhere in helping certain individuals meet their social and health goals thus
      making the subject worth a more profiled review. Physical activity is now a well-established
      element of the public health agenda. today's university students are our future social
      opinion leaders and policy makers and as such, their habits, beliefs and attitudes will be
      influential in shaping community norms and values. In addition, as a group, they are spending
      considerable time in a setting that promotes sedentary behavior (particularly computer and
      Internet use) and are largely being educated for sedentary occupations .

      Adherence to physical activity (PA) leads to improvements in physical function and quality of
      life . The adherence is one of the most important factors in order to get the desired
      benefits of PA. The role of the PA has been well- discussed in several studies and found to
      aid prevention of many health disorders, such as cardiovascular diseases and obesity .
      Regular exercise, in particular, helps protect against debilitating and costly chronic
      conditions as well and to achieve the optimum level of quality of life . Adherence to PA must
      be improved in order to improve health prospects. The adherence to the PA has been found to
      be extremely low in the Saudi population, particularly among young females . This poor
      adherence could be attributable to lack of knowledge about the benefits of exercise or even
      many related social and personal factors as well as cultural factors . The dangers of
      physical inactivity have been outlined in many studies as it is one of the most important
      public health problems of the 21st century . For example, physically inactive middle-aged
      women (performed less than 1 hour of exercise per week) experienced 52% increased all-cause
      mortality, a doubling of cardiovascular related mortality and 29% increased cancer-related
      mortality compared with the physically active women . Motivation for PA could be defined as
      the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be
      continually interested and committed to the initiation and the maintenance of a PA program or
      any type of exercise (10). Intrinsically motivated behaviors are those performed for
      satisfaction one gains from engaging in the activity itself. By contrast, extrinsically
      motivated behaviors are those performed in order to get rewards or results that are separate
      from the behavior itself . There are many different ways that have been used to increase the
      adherence level to the PA and the home exercise programs are an effective motivational way .
      Previous studies reported positive effect of using electronic media and mobile phone
      applications to enhance motivation in improving adherence among participants . Fukuoka et al.
      investigated the use of mobile phone based intervention to improve physical activity in
      sedentary women. They concluded that the mobile phone based intervention seems to motivate
      inactive women to improve their physical activity. Another study reported significant effects
      of Internet and mobile phone based motivation to improve the level of physical activity in
      healthy adults . In addition, Turner-McGreevy et al. reported some potential benefits of
      mobile phone monitoring methods during weight reduction intervention in overweight adults .
      The present study aimed primarily to evaluate the efficacy of using social media "WhatsApp
      application" as a motivational stimulus in improving Physical Activity levels among Saudi
      female college students in Abha city.
    

Intervention name(s): Promoting Physical Activity through mobile application
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Students will be randomly assigned to either the intervention or the control group. WhatsApp groups will be formed within each study group. The control participants will have the WhatsApp group only for communications. And they will keep their usual activity for 10 weeks. The intervention participants will have the intervention WhatsApp group which will be for communication and providing the intervention materials. The intervention group will receive a brief (15-minute) orientation on exercise, and benefits of keeping a healthy life pattern. They will receive 3-4 health-promotional (Physical activity) messages per week via WhatsApp for 10 weeks; group interaction is optional without adding more messages aiming to promote physical activities from any participants.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Participant)
Primary purpose: Prevention