Effects of A Remote, YouTube-Delivered Exercise Intervention on Young Adults’ Physical Activity, Sedentary Behavior, Sleep Quality, and Psychosocial Outcomes during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Randomized Controlled Trial
2021-08
Loading...
View/Download File
Persistent link to this item
Statistics
View StatisticsJournal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Title
Effects of A Remote, YouTube-Delivered Exercise Intervention on Young Adults’ Physical Activity, Sedentary Behavior, Sleep Quality, and Psychosocial Outcomes during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Randomized Controlled Trial
Authors
Published Date
2021-08
Publisher
Type
Thesis or Dissertation
Abstract
Introduction: Recent population-level surveillance data indicate that over 80% of U.S. adults fail to meet the minimum physical activity recommendations for aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activities. This has become a major public health challenge given the numerous physiological and economic consequences associated with physical inactivity. Additionally, high levels of physical inactivity have been observed to adversely affect individuals' sleep quality which further contributes to the incidence of hypokinetic diseases and all-cause mortality and further burdens the economy indirectly by decreasing daytime productivity. With the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the enacted regulations to reduce its transmission, there is currently an infectious disease pandemic that has compounded the preexisting physical inactivity pandemic. While all demographics have been affected by these regulations, U.S. young adults in particular have been forced to make extraordinary changes to their lifestyle and behavioral patterns which has created exceptional barriers to their physical activity participation and has further exacerbated the issue of poor sleep quality in this population. Recent public health guidelines, therefore, have called for innovative and flexible physical activity intervention strategies to promote physical activity and health amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Given present-day young adults are technology-savvy and are the primary consumers of social media, delivering a physical activity promotion intervention via social media may be an effective strategy for remotely disseminating such an intervention. However, meta-analyses have observed social media-based interventions to be ineffective at improving young adults’ physical activity levels and only one randomized controlled trial to date has examined the effectiveness of video-based social media platforms on this populations’ physical activity, showing no positive effects. Therefore, this study’s purpose was to examine the effects of a remote, home-based, YouTube video-delivered aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity intervention on young adults’ free-living aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity, sedentary behavior, sleep quality, and psychosocial health outcomes over 12 weeks compared to control (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04499547). Methods: Sixty-four young adults (48 females; X̅age = 22.8 ± 3.4 years; X̅BMI = 23.1 ± 2.6 kg/m2) from a large metropolitan research University in the Midwest participated in this prospective, 12-week, parallel randomized controlled trial during Fall 2020/Winter 2021. In detail, participants were randomized (1:1) into the intervention group (received weekly aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity videos grounded in Self-determination theory) or control group (received weekly general health education videos) for 12 weeks. Briefly, the intervention videos were grounded in Self-determination Theory because recent research observed that young adults demonstrated lower autonomous motivation to engage in home-based physical activities during the COVID-19 pandemic due to limited or no access to familiar exercise equipment, among other reasons. Briefly, Self-determination theory postulates that by fulfilling three basic human psychological needs (i.e., competency, autonomy, and relatedness), one’s motivation for physical activity will progress to more internally regulated forms, ranging from amotivation to intrinsic motivation, thereby improving the likelihood of longer-term adherence to physical activity. The primary outcome was free-living moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity, and the secondary outcomes were sedentary behavior, light physical activity, and sleep quality (measured using wrist-worn ActiGraph GT9X accelerometers) and muscle-strengthening physical activity frequency, Self-determination theory-related autonomous motivation for physical activity (i.e., non-regulation, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic regulation), perceived physical activity barriers, physical activity-related enjoyment, physical activity-related self-efficacy, and Self-determination Theory-related social support (assessed using validated questionnaires). Process evaluation outcomes (intervention fidelity, use, and adherence) were also evaluated. Repeated measures ANCOVAs examined between-group differences for all study outcomes at a Bonferroni-adjusted significance level of 0.003 (0.05/16 outcomes) to account for potential bias from multiple comparisons and effect sizes were calculated as partial eta-squared (p2) for outcomes which were observed as statistically significant. Results: Three experimental group participants discontinued participation for reasons unrelated to the study (retention rate = 95.3%). Because these participants’ baseline data were not significantly different from completers’ data, an intent-to-treat analysis was employed which was determined a priori. Because between-group demographic differences in randomized, parallel trials are, by definition, due to chance, baseline group differences were not statistically examined. Overall, however, it was determined that baseline comparisons between groups were not materially different and thus, concluded that the randomization procedures were robust. Statistically significant between-group differences were observed for moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity, sleep efficiency, muscle-strengthening physical activity frequency, non-regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic regulation, perceived physical activity barriers, and physical activity-related self-efficacy (F(1, 62) = 10.64-228.87, p < 0.001-0.002, p2 = 0.15-0.79) with all outcomes favoring the intervention group after 12 weeks. However, no statistically significant between-group differences were observed for sedentary behavior, light physical activity, sleep duration, external, introjected, and identified regulations, and physical activity-related enjoyment after 12 weeks (F(1, 62) = 0.69-4.60, p = 0.04-0.61). Conclusion: With some national COVID-19 restrictions still in place and uncertainty regarding post-pandemic physical activity/exercise environments and behaviors, a remote, YouTube-delivered physical activity and exercise intervention may help foster clinically meaningful improvements in young adults’ free-living moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity, muscle-strengthening physical activity frequency, sleep efficiency, physical activity-related intrinsic motivation, perceived physical activity barriers, and physical activity-related self-efficacy after 12 weeks. Indeed, this intervention yielded high interest, adherence, and use/acceptability among the sample of young adults.
Description
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. 2021. Major: Kinesiology. Advisor: Zan Gao. 1 computer file (PDF); xii, 179 pages
Related to
Replaces
License
Collections
Series/Report Number
Funding information
Isbn identifier
Doi identifier
Previously Published Citation
Suggested citation
McDonough, Daniel. (2021). Effects of A Remote, YouTube-Delivered Exercise Intervention on Young Adults’ Physical Activity, Sedentary Behavior, Sleep Quality, and Psychosocial Outcomes during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Randomized Controlled Trial. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/225007.
Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.