Harnessing social support to empower individuals with spinal cord injury to increase physical activity levels: Observations from feasibility studies.

Abstract

Introduction: We report findings from two feasibility studies with persons with SCI that aimed to leverage social support to increase PA: a two-week study with nine participants and a four-week study with six participants.

Method: We recruited a total of 17 participants across two phases (10 participants in Phase 1 and seven participants in Phase 2). In dyads, participants used a smartphone-smartwatch application that we iteratively developed based on participant feedback. The application delivered just-in-time support based on measured PA and encouraged reciprocal self-disclosure to increase closeness within dyads.

Results: Participants found the delivery of messages during detected PA to be motivational. Some liked automatically sharing tracked PA with others and did not have privacy concerns about doing so, and most preferred exchanging real-time messages more than context- or activity-triggered messages. Participants also expressed that feeling connected to their partner increased motivation to engage in PA.

Conclusion: Participants expressed that they liked being able to connect with individuals with shared life experience to exchange encouraging messages. There are, however, challenges that need to be addressed before a large-scale deployment of this technology, including user concerns about automatically detected activity.