None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
This study aims to assess the effect of an intervention to reduce problematic internet usage, to be run over 21 days. The intervention is based on the results of previous studies testing different aspects of a theory of self-regulation, which showed expected effects of inducing a Commitment or Progress framework on intentions for internet usage goals. The study intervention will test the effect of investigator feedback on participant internet usage in participants who report objectively problematic levels and patterns of internet use. It will test the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: When experiencing a goal setback on the previous day, individuals who frame their behviour in a Progress framework will subsequently perform better than individuals who frame their behaviour in terms of self-monitoring Hypothesis 2: When experiencing a goal achievement on the previous day, individuals who frame their behaviour in terms of a Commitment framework will subsequently perform better than individuals who frame their behaviour in terms of self-monitoring In terms of personal benefit, participants may reduce problematic internet usage and may learn new methods for regulating their behaviour towards their goals.
Interventions
The online Intervention is 21 days. Participants in the experimental group were given theory-driven (Dunbar et al., 2017, 2018; Fishbach & Zhang, 2009; Fishbach et al., 2009) feedback depending on the outcome of the comparison of their last two days personal internet hours. If there was a reduction in daily personal internet hours it was considered a success, and commitment feedback was provided. Examples of commitment feedback include “Congratulations. Your commitment to reduce your internet u
The online Intervention is 21 days. Participants in the experimental group were given theory-driven (Dunbar et al., 2017, 2018; Fishbach & Zhang, 2009; Fishbach et al., 2009) feedback depending on the outcome of the comparison of their last two days personal internet hours. If there was a reduction in daily personal internet hours it was considered a success, and commitment feedback was provided. Examples of commitment feedback include “Congratulations. Your commitment to reduce your internet usage is evident.”, “After the success of the previous day, how committed do you feel to your goal to reduce your personal internet usage?” and “Consider when faced with a dilemma whether to use the internet for personal use, you can use the internet for personal use OR do something much more productive”. If the value was the same or worse than previously it was considered a failure, and progress feedback was provided. Examples of progress feedback include “Your results indicate you failed to progress towards your goal to reduce your personal internet usage. This indicates that improvement is required.” and “How much progress towards your goal do you feel you have made after the disappointment of yesterday?”. In order to prevent repetition, four variations of each feedback scenario of commitment and progress conditions were created and randomly selected for each participant on each occasion. Participants record daily personal internet usage using a study specific measure. Feedback is provided to participants via daily text message (automated). Adherence was not monitored.
Sponsors
University of Adelaide
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Subject)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
17 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
The target population for these behavior changes are individuals who experience difficulties regulating their time on the internet. Therefore, participants who scored 40 or higher on the IAT were included, as scores of 40-69 on the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) are indicative of individuals who have frequent problems, and scores of 70-100 are indicative of significant issues (Kuss & Lopez-Fernandez, 2016; Laconi et al., 2014).
Exclusion criteria
The intervention relies on priming mental representation frameworks via the common understandings and social constructs of the English words commitment and progress. Previous research (Dunbar et al., 2018) showed that this does not occur reliably with participants for whom English is a second language. Therefore, any students for whom English was not their first language were excluded.
Outcome results
None listed