Dr. Jaclyn Maher (Kinesiology) received new funding from the National Institute on Aging for the project “Microtemporal Motivational Processes Regulating Health Behavior Adoption and Maintenance in Older Adults.” Dr. Jeffrey Labban and Dr. Laurie Kennedy-Malone are co-principal investigators on the project.
There is strong evidence that increasing physical activity (PA), and emerging evidence that reducing sedentary behavior (SB), are important health behaviors for primary prevention, disease management, and preventing mobility declines among older adults. Yet, interventions aiming to increase PA and reduce SB among older adults have only been modestly successful in the short-term and results suggest the long-term maintenance of these behaviors is even more difficult to achieve.
Contemporary health behavior theories rarely model the entire behavioral sequence from adoption to maintenance which may contribute to the lack of sustained behavior change in these interventions. Emerging evidence suggests dual-process theories may help bridge this gap by explaining how differential pathways guide behavioral adoption and maintenance.
According to dual-process theories, reflective processes based on deliberation and rationality are thought to play a greater role in health behavior adoption whereas reactive processes rooted in automaticity and unconscious associations are thought to play a greater role in health behavior maintenance.
This research will use a dual-process theoretical framework combined with an innovative methodology, Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), and sensor-based monitoring of behavior to determine the motivational processes that regulate behavior over micro timescales (e.g., minutes, hours, days) and ultimately drive behavioral adoption and maintenance. One-hundred older adults identified as PA adopters and 100 older adults identified as PA maintainers will be recruited. Participants will complete 3 waves of data collection over 1 year, with each wave lasting 14 days. EMA prompts will be randomly delivered via smartphone 10 times per day on select days within each wave and assess reflective and reactive processes. Specific Aim 1 will determine the extent to which momentary reflective and reactive processes are differentially associated with PA and SB at that moment among behavioral adopters and maintainers.
Specific Aim 2 will determine the extent to which person-level patterns in reflective and reactive processes predict behavioral adoption versus maintenance at each wave and at the end of one year. Specific Aim 3 will explore reflective and reactive motivational processes predicting change in adopter/maintainer status from wave to wave (i.e., adopter to maintainer, maintainer to adopter).
This work is an essential step towards a larger program of research aimed at integrating real-time data from EMA and accelerometers into electronic feedback and self-regulatory systems to promote sustained behavior change among older adults in real-world environments.
