Trial Information

Online Tailored Interventions & Relational Agents for Exercise and Sun Protection

The overarching goal of this research project is to revise and enhance a multimedia
computer-based multiple risk factor intervention for cancer prevention, using the internet
to reach a general population. Two innovative, individualized, easily disseminated,
low-cost, and interactive interventions, both for multiple behaviors (sun protection and
exercise adoption), will be developed and evaluated in comparison to a control condition.
The first intervention involves adapting our effective multimedia expert system
interventions to the internet environment. The second intervention builds on the first with
the additional inclusion of a Relational Agent, a recently developed computer-based approach
to establishing a personal relationship typically missing on internet sites. Both systems
will employ the same theoretical model of behavior change, the Transtheoretical Model, as
the deep knowledge, and all systems will employ empirically based decision rules. The design
is a 3 Group (Control, Internet, Internet plus Relational Agent) x 3 Occasions (0, 12, 24 •
Months) with intervention occurring during the first 12 months. A representative national
sample of 1639 individuals at risk for both behaviors will be recruited. The primary aims
are: (1) To develop and assess the effectiveness of a tailored internet intervention on a
national sample; (2) To develop and assess the effectiveness of the internet intervention
enhanced by a relational agent; and (3) To determine if the intervention with the relational
agent can outperform the regular tailored internet intervention. The secondary aims are: (1)
To determine if the two interventions are differentially effective with each behavior and
with different subgroups, and (2) To determine if the relational agent intervention is
utilized more often for increasing exercise than for sun protection. This study targets two
major risk factors for cancer; is designed to treat the behaviors on a population basis,
using proactive recruitment strategies; intervenes on multiple behaviors simultaneously,
thereby producing greater impacts for cancer prevention; utilizes one of the most promising
approaches to low cost population based interventions for health-related behavior change,
namely the internet; and develops and tests a promising new approach to increasing the
utilization and effectiveness of internet-based interventions, relational agents.