Developing Assistive Interventions: Promises and Challenges

Digital Interventions

Information systems that aim to change behaviors are often considered as digital (behavior) interventions (Reeve & Dunbar, 2001). It could be cautiously argued that labeling behavior change technologies as digital interventions is rather simplistic. The research field of digital interventions dates back to early 90s where interventions were primarily employed and evaluated in the field of preventive health and medicine largely through intermediations (paper-based and/or telephonic reminders). A considerable number of studies have been conducted that aimed to intervene health-related behaviors. For instance, Reiter, Robertson and Osman’s (2003) STOP system studied smoking behaviors using digitally generated and letter-based interventions: Revere and Dunbar (2001) argue that tailored digital interventions are moderately effective. Likewise, Brendryen and Kraft (2008) studied web-based digital intervention for smoke cessation. The intervention was conducted using the Internet and telephone. Brendryen and Kraft (2008) argue that digital interventions showed promise in supporting people adopt healthy behaviors. Noar, Harrington and Aldrich (2009) report that a substantial amount of work has been done in personalizing interventions in the health domain. They base their illustration on their review of 37 health behavior intervention studies. Noar et al. (2009) also performed a meta-analytic review of 57 studies evaluating health behavior interventions and report that tailoring can bring effectiveness to digital interventions in the health domain.