Direct and indirect effects of a digital Five Ways to Wellbeing intervention: A network intervention analysis

While digital positive psychology interventions demonstrate effectiveness in promoting wellbeing and reducing illbeing in the general population, their pathways of change are relatively underexplored. The wellbeing promotive digital intervention, Five Ways to Wellbeing for All (5waysA), has been shown effective (Cohens’ d effect sizes from .20 to .49) in a large (N = 963) randomized controlled trial (Prydz et al., 2024). In the present study, network intervention analysis (NIA) was applied to identify putative direct and indirect effects linking the 5waysA intervention to a set of wellbeing outcomes. Following the 10-week intervention period, the NIA revealed that only positive emotions on an aggregate level were conditionally dependent on the treatment allocation variable. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of the 5waysA intervention primarily reflects the direct enhancement of positive emotions. Our findings provide insights of potential importance for advancing the theoretical framework of the Five Ways to Wellbeing and other mental health and wellbeing promoting interventions.