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Efficacy of Three Online Well-Being Programs to Improve Work-Related Outcomes

A Randomized Trial Examining the Impact of Three 8-week Online Well-Being Programs on Employment-Related Absenteeism, Engagement, Burnout, Stress, and Resilience

Status
Completed
Phases
NA
Study type
Interventional
Source
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry ID
NCT03306654
Enrollment
6000
Registered
2017-10-11
Start date
2017-10-24
Completion date
2018-03-14
Last updated
2018-08-01

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Well-being

Brief summary

Participants will be randomly assigned between three well-being programs, and assessed with questionnaires before and after the 8-week program, as well as 1-month after the end of the program.

Detailed description

Participants will be randomly assigned between three different well-being programs, with each program lasting 8-weeks and taking place on a simplified research version of the Happify platform. Well-being programs include the unchanged Happify platform, a version of the Happify platform that is designed to engage with specific activities but does not aim to promote positive emotion or reduce negative emotion (i.e., Placebo condition), and a version of the Happify platform that encourages thinking about well-being through quizzes and polls without providing any instructions for promotion (i.e., Wait-list Control). Participants will be asked to complete questionnaires before and after the 8-week program, as well as a 1-month follow-up questionnaire after the program is complete, at which point study participation will end.

Interventions

BEHAVIORALHappify

An online platform for conveying techniques from positive psychology, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and mindfulness-based stress reduction.

Sponsors

Happify Inc.
Lead SponsorINDUSTRY

Study design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
OTHER
Masking
NONE

Intervention model description

Users are randomly assigned between arms after completing baseline assessment and stay in that arm for the duration of the study.

Eligibility

Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes

Inclusion criteria

* No prior experience on the Happify platform (new user registration) * Full-time employment

Exclusion criteria

* None

Design outcomes

Primary

MeasureTime frameDescription
Absenteeism (Health and Performance Questionnaire, HPQ [World Health Organization (WHO), 2002])Change from baseline to 8-week post, 1-month follow-upAn 8-item subset of the HPQ focusing on job absenteeism and work quality. Participants will be asked to indicate how many times in the past week they missed part of/an entire work day due to problems with their physical or mental health, and to indicate how often in the past 7 days the quality of their work suffered (e.g., how often they found themselves not working as carefully as they should).
Work Engagement (Utrecht Work Engagement Scale [Schaufeli et al., 2002])Change from baseline to 8-week post, 1-month follow-upA 2-item subset of the UWES focusing on job resilience and perseverance. Participants will be asked to indicate how frequently they feel mentally resilient at their job and how frequently they persevere.
Burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory [Maslach & Jackson, 1981])Change from baseline to 8-week post, 1-month follow-upA 5-item subset of the MBI focusing on feeling burned out in work settings. Participants will be asked to indicate the extent to which they agree that they feel burned out (e.g., that they feel burned out from their work or feel frustrated by their job).
Job-Related Stress (Stress-related Presenteeism Scale [Gilbreath & Frew, 2008])Change from baseline to 8-week post, 1-month follow-upA 6-item measure of job stress-related presenteeism. Participants will be asked to indicate how frequently they suffer from stress-related presenteeism is work (e.g., they are unable to concentrate on their job at work, or stress distracts their attention away from job tasks).
Resilience (composite of Perceived Stress Scale [Cohen et al., 1983], Happify Scale [Carpenter et al., 2016] and Life Orientation Scale, Revised [Scheier & Carver, 1985]).Change from baseline to 8-week post, 1-month follow-upComposite score made of perceived stress, positive emotionality, and optimism. Perceived stress was measured using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983), a 10-item questionnaire that asks users to rate on a scale of 0 (never) to 4 (very often) how frequently they experience various symptoms of feeling stress. Positive emotionality was measured using the emotion subscale of the Happify Scale (HS-E; Carpenter, Crutchley, Zilca, Schwartz, Smith, Cobb, & Parks, 2016), which is a 4-item scale asking participants to rate the extent to which, over the past week, they have experienced positive and negative emotions that are activated or de-activated. Optimism was measured using the Life Orientation Scale, Revised (LOT-R; Scheier & Carver, 1985), a 6-item scale on which participants rate the extent to which they identify with optimistic or pessimistic beliefs.
Absenteeism (Healthy Days measure [Center for Disease Control (CDC), 2000])Change from baseline to 8-week post, 1-month follow-upA 1-item measure of the extent to which poor physical/mental health prevents one from doing their usual activities, such as self-care, work, or recreation, in the past 30 days \[CDC, 2002\].

Countries

United States

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026