Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

College students in the United States face unique health risks such as problematic alcohol use, poor nutrition, low sleep quality, and low rates of exercise. Research increasingly shows interventions utilizing individualized approaches lead to longer term pro-health behavior change. Values-centered Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a useful framework to for development of personalized, effective interventions. One reason for this may be that impersonalized interventions and researcher-generated target behaviors common in other literatures may not hold the same evocative effect and connection to health behaviors for each or every participant. In ACT, valuing increases the probability of values-consistent behavior, such as engagement in health behaviors, by increasing their reinforcing properties. This investigation sought to explore health valuing with innovative, values-focused methods applied to a group level intervention. Specifically, this study replicated the use of multiple domain-specific outcomes of previous work (Stapleton et al., 2020), extended valuing interventions with the use of clinical tools (Harris, 2008; Wilson & Sandoz, 2010), and failed to replicate findings in previous work using ideographic motivational statements (Jackson et al., 2016). While this intervention did not generate significant improvement in health behaviors relative to a control intervention in 74 participants, this study has implications for future digital health intervention design and implementation.

Year manuscript completed

2022

Year degree awarded

2022

Author's Keywords

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, values, ecological momentary intervention, digital, health

Degree Awarded

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Thesis Advisor

Michael J. Bordieri

Committee Member

Jana Hackathorn

Committee Member

Gage Jordan

Committee Member

Brenda Reeves

Document Type

Thesis

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