Thanks for sharing the details of this research - it is very valuable towards arriving at an accurate assessment of various interventions.
One question with regard to the methodology of these RCTs is when and for how long did they record the consumption pattern of the participants following the intervention? Specifically, do we have any insights on short-term vs long-term impact of such interventions focused on behavioral change?
Also, I understand that you report the results as SMD. However, it is quite likely that there is a small minority in the treatment group in these interventions that probably contribute to most of the difference that is observed. Do we know anything about the percentage of individuals who are likely to make considerable changes to their dietary patterns based on these interventions?
Delays run the gamut. Jalil et al (2023) measure three years worth of dining choices, Weingarten et al. A few weeks; other studies are measuring what’s eaten at a dining hall during treatment and control but with no individual outcomes; and other studies are structured recall tasks like 3/7/30 days after treatment they ask people to say what they ate in a 24 hour period or over a given week. We did a bit of exploratory work on the relationship between length of delay and outcome size and didn’t find anything interesting.
I’m afraid we don’t know that overall. A few studies did moderator analysis where they found that people who scored high on some scale or personality factor tended to reduce their MAP consumption more, but no moderator stood out to us as a solid predictor here. Some studies found that women seem more amenable to messaging interventions, based on the results of Piester et al. 2020 and a few others, but some studies that exclusively targeted women found very little. I think gendered differences are interesting here but we didn’t find anything conclusive.
Thanks for sharing the details of this research - it is very valuable towards arriving at an accurate assessment of various interventions.
One question with regard to the methodology of these RCTs is when and for how long did they record the consumption pattern of the participants following the intervention? Specifically, do we have any insights on short-term vs long-term impact of such interventions focused on behavioral change?
Also, I understand that you report the results as SMD. However, it is quite likely that there is a small minority in the treatment group in these interventions that probably contribute to most of the difference that is observed. Do we know anything about the percentage of individuals who are likely to make considerable changes to their dietary patterns based on these interventions?
Hi there,
Delays run the gamut. Jalil et al (2023) measure three years worth of dining choices, Weingarten et al. A few weeks; other studies are measuring what’s eaten at a dining hall during treatment and control but with no individual outcomes; and other studies are structured recall tasks like 3/7/30 days after treatment they ask people to say what they ate in a 24 hour period or over a given week. We did a bit of exploratory work on the relationship between length of delay and outcome size and didn’t find anything interesting.
I’m afraid we don’t know that overall. A few studies did moderator analysis where they found that people who scored high on some scale or personality factor tended to reduce their MAP consumption more, but no moderator stood out to us as a solid predictor here. Some studies found that women seem more amenable to messaging interventions, based on the results of Piester et al. 2020 and a few others, but some studies that exclusively targeted women found very little. I think gendered differences are interesting here but we didn’t find anything conclusive.