Adherence to daily dietary and activity goals set within a Māori and Pacific weight loss competition.

BACKGROUND

New Zealand Pacific and Māori populations measure disproportionately high on the international body mass index (BMI). Information is needed on what behavioural weight loss goals to recommend and how to attract and retain them in interventions. Our team weight loss competition trial for participants with a BMI ≥30 used cash prizes to incentivise completion of nine daily behaviour goals. This paper evaluates the theoretical merit of and adherence to these goals.

METHODS

A qualitative component evaluation methodology was used. Trial data on team activity, demographics and anthropometric outcome data were extracted to determine frequency of daily goal completion by teams throughout the competition and to describe participant characteristics. T-tests were used to compare completion rates of the challenges, challenge completion by day of week and between weekdays and weekends. To examine adherence to the daily challenge activity over 24 weeks the total amount of completed challenges adjusted for number of active teams was plotted by week. A Body Shape Index (ABSI) was used to determine individual anthropometric change from baseline to 8, 16 and 24 weeks. Program documents were analysed to identify barriers to adherence and retention of participants.

RESULTS

Of 19 teams (

CONCLUSIONS

Incentives offer a promising strategy for encouraging retention in weight loss interventions. This study suggests that participants in a competition will perform incentivised tasks. The findings however, are limited by missing data and high drop out of individuals and whole teams. Further research is needed on how to increase retention.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

This study was conducted according to the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki and all procedures involving human subjects/patients were approved by the Northern B Health and Disability Ethics Committee (16/NTB/101) on 5 July 2016. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.Not applicable.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.