Effect of a stimulus control intervention on attendance at a university fitness center.
A mailed key-chain prompt alone fails to budge college gym visits.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team mailed college students a free key-chain with the word EXERCISE on it. They wanted to see if the key-chain would act as a daily prompt to visit the campus gym.
Students were split into three groups: key-chain, placebo key-chain, or no key-chain. The researchers then counted gym visits for several weeks.
What they found
The key-chain made no real difference. Gym visits stayed flat in all three groups.
In short, a small plastic prompt by itself is not enough to change adult exercise habits.
How this fits with other research
Azrin et al. (1969) got adults to take more pills by making them turn a knob to shut off a tone. Their gadget worked because it forced a brief action right before the pill. The 1996 key-chain lacked that immediate response step.
Cameron et al. (1996) ran quick 5-minute tests and found the right stimulus prompt could raise kids’ school accuracy. Their prompts were matched to each child and given at the exact moment of the task. The gym study mailed the prompt days ahead and hoped for later follow-through.
Green et al. (1999) cut problem behavior during exercise by adding favorite items before, during, and after the workout. They paired exercise with strong reinforcers, something the key-chain never did.
Why it matters
If you want clients to follow through on a healthy routine, a stand-alone visual prompt is weak sauce. Tie the prompt to an immediate action, add reinforcement, or personalize it to the setting. Next time you design a self-management plan, skip the souvenir and build in a response or reward right at the point of performance.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of the present study was to determine the isolated effects of stimulus control on attendance at a fitness facility. Participants were members of a university fitness club randomly assigned to control (n = 50), placebo (n = 50), and stimulus control (n = 100) conditions. The control condition received no intervention, the placebo condition received a letter by mail, and the stimulus control condition received the same letter by mail plus a complimentary "EXERCISE" key chain, which was to act as the stimulus control. Attendance was monitored surreptitiously for 5 weeks baseline and 8 weeks postintervention by using the facility's computer system. A manipulation check found that 48 of the 100 participants used the key chain. Therefore, analyses were conducted separately for "intention to treat" and "actual treatment" conditions. Repeated measures multivariate analyses of variance revealed no main or interaction effects involving experimental condition in either the "intention to treat" or "actual treatment" analyses. Discussion focused on explanations for why the stimulus control intervention was not successful, and directions for future research were provided.
Behavior modification, 1996 · doi:10.1177/01454455960202004