- Title
- Evaluating Digital Program Support for the Physical Activity 4 Everyone (PA4E1) School Program: Mixed Methods Study
- Creator
- Mclaughlin, Matthew; Duff, Jed; McKenzie, Tom; Campbell, Elizabeth; Sutherland, Rachel; Wiggers, John; Wolfenden, Luke
- Relation
- NHMRC.1128348 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1128348 | 1150661 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1150661
- Relation
- JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting Vol. 4, Issue 3, no. e26690
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/26690
- Publisher
- JMIR Publications
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Background: Effectively scaled-up physical activity interventions are urgently needed to address the high prevalence of physical inactivity. To facilitate scale-up of an efficacious school-based physical activity program (Physical Activity 4 Everyone [PA4E1]), provision of implementation support to physical education (PE) teachers was adapted from face-to-face and paper-based delivery modes to partial delivery via a website. A lack of engagement (usage and subjective experience) with digital delivery modes, including websites, may in part explain the typical reduction in effectiveness of scaled-up interventions that use digital delivery modes. A process evaluation focused on the PA4E1 website was undertaken. Objective: The 2 objectives were to (1) describe the usage of the PA4E1 program website by in-school champions (PE teachers leading the program within their schools) and PE teachers using quantitative methods; (2) examine the usage, subjective experience, and usability of the PA4E1 program website from the perspective of in-school champions using mixed methods. Methods: The first objective used website usage data collected across all users (n=273) throughout the 9 school terms of the PA4E1 implementation support. The 4 usage measures were sessions, page views, average session duration, and downloads. Descriptive statistics were calculated and explored across the duration of the 26-month program. The second objective used mixed methods, triangulating data from the first objective with data from a think-aloud survey and usability test completed by in-school champions (n=13) at 12 months. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically alongside descriptive statistics from the quantitative data in a triangulation matrix, generating cross-cutting themes using the "following a thread" approach. Results: For the first objective, in-school champions averaged 48.0 sessions per user, PE teachers 5.8 sessions. PE teacher sessions were of longer duration (10.5 vs 7.6 minutes) and included more page views (5.4 vs 3.4). The results from the mixed methods analysis for the second objective found 9 themes and 2 meta-themes. The first meta-theme indicated that the website was an acceptable and appropriate delivery mode, and usability of the website was high. The second meta-theme found that the website content was acceptable and appropriate, and identified specific suggestions for improvement. Conclusions: Digital health interventions targeting physical activity often experience issues of lack of user engagement. By contrast, the findings from both the quantitative and mixed methods analyses indicate high usage and overall acceptability and appropriateness of the PA4E1 website to school teachers. The findings support the value of the website within a multidelivery mode implementation intervention to support schools to implement physical activity promoting practices. The analysis identified suggested intervention refinements, which may be adopted for future iterations and further scale-up of the PA4E1 program.
- Subject
- process evaluation; engagement; think-aloud methodology; mixed methods; physical activity; website
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1471794
- Identifier
- uon:48725
- Identifier
- ISSN:2561-6722
- Rights
- ©Matthew Mclaughlin, Jed Duff, Tom McKenzie, Elizabeth Campbell, Rachel Sutherland, John Wiggers, Luke Wolfenden. Originally published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting (https://pediatrics.jmir.org), 26.07.2021. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://pediatrics.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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