Video games for Obesity & Diabetes Prevention: Efficacy Trial

描述(由申请人提供)：虽然糖尿病预防计划表明，相对较小的饮食和体力活动改变可以显著降低高危成年人的糖尿病发病率，但很少有计划影响儿童的肥胖或糖尿病风险。随着儿童肥胖率和糖尿病患病率的上升，需要创新的项目来吸引儿童的注意力，并允许行为改变的信息传递出去。严肃的视频游戏及其身临其境的故事提供了一个这样一个有希望的替代方案。《逃离戴铂》和《纳米群：来自太空的入侵》是两款视频游戏，它们的设计遵循了四种行为改变理论，旨在增加水果、蔬菜和水的摄入量，降低久坐的行为。在一项风险相对较低的初步研究中，这两款游戏被证明可以改变这些儿童的饮食和体育活动习惯。鉴于这一初步成功，重要的是测试这些干预措施对高危儿童糖尿病风险(即空腹胰岛素)的有效性(这应该会增加效果)，并使用更大的样本来了解游戏如何使用中介变量分析来改变行为。一项针对444名10至12岁高危儿童(85%体重指数和99%体重指数)的研究被提出。儿童将被随机分配到治疗组或对照组。对照组将接受知识饮食、体育活动、肥胖和糖尿病视频游戏和互联网网站的干预。视频游戏是一种前景看好的低成本干预方法，因为游戏已经开发出来，只需复制和分发DVD就可以广泛传播。没有一项研究测试了基于理论的视频游戏对饮食和体力活动的影响，这些影响足以调查中介变量。进行中介变量分析将为未来视频游戏的设计提供信息，并增强其促进健康行为变化的能力。虽然使用电子游戏促进健康是有争议的，但这项研究将确定电子游戏在哪里有效地改变儿童患糖尿病的风险(特别是胰岛素、饮食和体力活动)。 与公共健康相关：水果、蔬菜、水的摄入量和体力活动仍大大低于最低建议，表明糖尿病和肥胖症的风险增加。严肃的电子游戏有望促进这些行为的增加。这项拟议的研究代表了下一步确定行为设计的视频游戏是否会影响高风险样本中的风险和行为。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): While the Diabetes Prevention Program demonstrated that relatively small changes in diet and physical activity could substantially reduce the incidence of diabetes among high risk adults, few programs have influenced obesity or diabetes risks among children. With the increasing rates of child obesity and diabetes, innovative programs are needed that capture children's attention and permit behavior change messages to get through. Serious video games with their immersive stories offer one such promising alternative. "Escape from Diab" and "Nanoswarm: Invasion from Inner Space" are two video games guided in their design by four behavior change theories that were targeted at increasing fruit, vegetable and water intakes, and lowering sedentary behaviors, and have been shown to change these children's diet and physical activity practices in a pilot study with a relatively low risk sample. In light of this preliminary success, it is important to test the efficacy of these interventions on diabetes risks (i.e. fasting insulin) with higher risk children (which should increase the effect) and with a larger sample to learn how the games change behaviors using mediating variable analyses. A study with 444 high risk (85 percentile<BMI<99 percentile) 10 to 12 year old children is proposed. Children will be randomly assigned to treatment or control groups. The control group will receive an intervention involving knowledge based diet, physical activity, obesity and diabetes video games and web sites on the internet. Video games are a promising low cost approach to intervention since the games have already been developed, and can be broadly disseminated by simply reproducing and distributing their DVDs. No study has appeared that tested the effects of theory based video games on diet and physical activity that was adequately powered to investigate mediating variables. Conducting the mediating variable analyses will inform the design of future video games and enhance their ability to promote health behavior change. While using video games for health promotion is controversial, this study will establish where video games efficaciously change diabetes risks (especially insulin, diet and physical activity) among children. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Fruit, vegetable, and water consumption and physical activity are still substantially below minimum recommendations, indicating increased risks for diabetes and obesity. Serious video games hold promise for promoting increases in these behaviors. The proposed research represents the next step in determining whether behavioral designed video games influence risks and behaviors in a high risk sample.