A Longitudinal Look at Habit Strength as a Measure of Success in Decreasing Prolonged Occupational Sitting

The risks associated with sedentary behavior in the workplace are an ever-growing concern for employers. Currently there is an emphasis in workplace health messages to decrease sitting time and increase incidental workday movement as a means of reducing sedentariness in the population. This emphasis is the result of a confluence of studies showing that prolonged bouts of sitting are a factor in the incidence of poor health outcomes and that small periods of non-exercise physical activity (NEPA) offer health benefits.

In this study, desk-based workers volunteered to be part of a yearlong pilot study utilizing an e-health intervention designed to interrupt prolonged workplace sitting with movement breaks. They were pre-screened to ensure they had desk-based job responsibilities, daily use of a desktop computer, were free from pre-existing health conditions, and were ready to engage in behavior change. Participants worked an average of 35.51 ± 10.24 hours per week. And participants in a passive-prompt group had to engage with an e-health software program on an hourly basis during work hours, while participants in an active-prompt group were allowed to postpone the prompt each hour. Daily adherence data and self-reported sitting habit strength were measured every 13 weeks for one year. A mixed design ANOVA was used to determine significant differences at the p < 0.05 level.

The results showed that passive-prompt participants reported significant improvements in reducing sitting habit strength over time, compared to active-prompt participants who actually reported increased sitting habit strength. In short, this study provided preliminary evidence that changing desk-based workers’ sitting habits might be more difficult than previously estimated and that passive-based interventions could be one solution. Besides, this observation should give researchers further impetus to engage in future studies of the length of time needed to extinguish unwanted health habits. Moreover, health researchers and policy makers perhaps should reconsider more passive-based health interventions to explore habit change.

Article by Scott J. Pedersen, et al, from Australia.

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