Clinical trial NCT01043757: Financial Incentives for Increasing Exercise
Official title: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Financial Incentives for Increasing Exercise
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: WITHDRAWN
Phase: NA
Conditions: Sedentary Lifestyle
Obesity
Keywords: Sedentary lifestyle
physical exercise
behavioral economics
financial incentives
obesity
Lead sponsor: Harvard University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Blue Cross Blue Shield
name: Genzyme, a Sanofi Company
name: Partners HealthCare
First posted: 2010-01-07
Enrollment: 0
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: Participants will be employees of Genzyme who volunteer to participate in a study on motivating healthy behaviors, involving giving them goals for taking a certain number of steps per day, and increasing that number over time. Participants will wear pedometers and upload their data to a website that allows them to monitor their progress, and have the opportunity to win money based on meeting their step goals.

Interested employees will schedule a day and time to complete a health screening at a "Health Fair" at their place of employment, to ensure that they are healthy enough to participate; at this time participants will also complete the investigators baseline dependent measures, and receive a pedometer. After a one-week baseline period during which they wear the pedometer and the investigators establish their typical number of steps per day, eligible participants will then be assigned to one of four treatments - a "no incentive" control condition, and three conditions in which they are entered into different kinds of monetary lotteries if they have met their step goals for that day. Participants' initial goal will be based on their steps during the baseline period, and the goal will increase by 250 steps each week, for a total of 12 weeks. After these 3 months, the incentives portion of the experiment ends, but participants continue to wear their pedometers and upload their data for an additional 6 months. At 3 months, 6 months, and then at the study end at 9 months, participants again complete the investigators dependent measures at follow-up Health Fairs at their place of employment.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* BMI of 28 or higher
* Pass the Par-Q
* answer "No" to all Par-Q questions
* at least 18 years of age
* has computer at home or work with compatible operating system (i.e. windows 2000, windows xp, windows vista, osX 10.3-10.5), internet access, and usb port

Exclusion Criteria:

* Anyone who does not meet all of the inclusion criteria

Primary outcomes:
measure: Physical activity
timeFrame: 12 weeks
Secondary outcomes:
measure: RAND 36-item Health Survey
timeFrame: 3mo, 6mo, 9mo
measure: Health Stress questionnaire
timeFrame: 3mo, 6mo, 9mo
measure: Emotional, Work, and Financial Attitudes questionnaire
timeFrame: 3mo, 6mo, 9mo
measure: Weight loss
timeFrame: 3mo, 6mo, 9mo
measure: Hemoglobin A1C
timeFrame: 6mo
measure: Health behaviors questionnaire
timeFrame: 3mo, 6mo, 9mo
measure: Word of mouth
timeFrame: 6mo, 9mo
measure: Physical activity
timeFrame: 6mo, 9mo
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Cambridge
country: United States
facility: Genzyme
state: Massachusetts
Study officials:
affiliation: Harvard University
name: Michael I. Norton, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: