Drop-out In The Web-based Intervention Of Multiple Health Behaviors Among College Students

Background:With the development of network information technology,web-based health intervention has become a new model to promote the healthy lifestyle of the public,and its effectiveness has been supported by many empirical studies.However,web-based health intervention has the problem of high rate of subject drop-out.More and more scholars have begun to pay attention to this problem because of the influence of the loss of subjects on the researcher's evaluation of the effect of intervention and the maximum benefit of the intervention.Therefore,it is necessary and meaningful to carry out research on web-based health intervention drop-out phenomenon.Purpose:The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of the drop-out of college students who participate in the web-based health intervention through a mixed research paradigm of quantitative and qualitative research.The specific research objectives include:a)Comparing the difference in the effect of web-based health intervention between leavers and adherents;b)Investigating the relevant predictors of web-based health behavior drop-out;c)Exploring the experience of web-based health intervention of leavers and adherents;d)Finding out the reasons why leavers quit web-based health intervention.Research methods:This paper adopts Mixed-research method.The quantitative part of the analysis is based on an earlier study of web-based health interventions to promote college students'physical activity?HEPA?and fruit and vegetable consumption?FVC?.Subjects were included in the two intervention groups of this intervention study,a total of 330 subjects(M_age=20.1,SD=1.04),of which female subjects accounted for 60.6%.In this study,the linear mixed model is used to solve the research objective a),and the multiple binary logistic regression is used to solve the research objective b).The subjects of the qualitative study were selected from the quantitative study,including 12 compliance subjects and 12 defectors,a total of 24 subjects(M_age=19.38,SD=0.81).All participants were invited to participate in a series of face-to-face,semi-structured interviews.The interviews were conducted on two topics:a)Participants'experience of participating in web-based health intervention;b)Reasons for the loss of the subjects.This study adopts thematic analysis method to analyze qualitative data.Results:The results of the quantitative study showed that there was a significant difference in the change of fruit and vegetable intake behavior between the leavers and the adherents,but there was no significant difference in the amount of physical activity;There was a significant difference in the intervention effect between the leavers and the adherents in the behavioral intention and motivational self-efficacy of two kinds of healthy behaviors?HEPA and FVC?.And gender,behavioral intention of HEPA,volitional self-efficacy to HEPA and motivation self-efficacy of FVC are of great significance for predicting the drop-out of subjects;In the qualitative research results,three themes were identified for topic 1,including HEPA and FVC behaviors,determinants affecting behavior change,and physical and mental health benefits.Two themes were identified for topic 2,including internal causes and external causes.Conclusion:This study conducted an in-depth discussion on the phenomenon of the drop-out of subjects in the web-based health intervention.,and the effect of web-based health intervention was compared between the leavers and the adherents.Moreover,the diversity of reasons for the loss of participants was found,which is of great significance for implementing more efficient web-based health intervention in the future.